At the annual conference Knowledge Creation Symposium held in Japan in September, there took place presentation of the electron book "Processing of Technical and Patent Information by Using Evolution Trees". The book written on a laser disk is accompanied by a poster presenting the display evolution tree:
http://www.textmining.jp/IM/ebook/ebook_display.htm
The electron book was created on the initiative of Nikolay Shpakovsky within the framework of cooperation between the Euro-Asian Patent Agency (EPAG, Minsk) and Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI System, Toyo). The author of the book is Nikolay Shpakovksy; the adviser on patent problems is Sergey Vinogradov, patent agent; the book design and illustrations are by Elena Novitskaya.



The work with patent information aimed at bypassing of competing patents and creating of a reliable protection for the company's own developments is of great importance. Close attention to this work may benefit considerably the company while underestimation of this work may turn into serious losses.
How could existing patent information processing methods be improved?
First of all, by improving the quality of the collected information analysis. The information analysis will be effective enough if information is properly classified, that is, if a full and logic information structure is built.
The following problem emerges. The patent search results in a number of transformations of the same technical system, that is, of the system which performs the same function. Such information is not easy to classify because of impossibility to use the principle classification criterion - the function of the technical system. Therefore, structurization of the patent search results often has a subjective character, which reduces the analysis effectiveness.

The peculiar feature of the proposed approach is use of the Evolution Tree - a set of technical system evolution lines - for structuring the information collected during the patent search. This allows speaking about the classification criterion objectiveness, because evolution lines are the consequence of objective laws of technical system evolution that are widely employed in TRIZ. Using the evolution tree makes it possible to get advantages at all patent and technical information processing stages. In addition, the Evolution Tree has value in itself and may be used for strategic planning and forecasting the evolution of a system under analysis.



The theory is illustrated by the evolution tree of a real technical system - a display. The tree traces the display evolution from a stationary image produced on a surface through cinematograph, television based on mechanical scanning and CRT, flat display and further on to the microlevel, an ideal display capable of translating an image directly into the human brain.

The book is published only in Japanese. The team is planning to publish it in other languages, too, first of all in Russian and English. Contact address: triztrainer@nm.ru.