The extraction of technical trend information from patent literature

This article gives a report of a study of the extraction of information from patent literature, that was undertaken at the Netherlands Patent Office. A description is given of the method that was followed for the identification, selection and collecting of abstracts of patent documents in a certain technical field and for the carrying out of a trend analysis on the basis of these abstracts. The technical field selected was 'Treatment of blood with the aid of capillary membranes'. From the results of the trend analysis obtained for a number of subjects from the field, two are reproduced by way of example. Finally some comments are given upon the applied methods and the obtained results.