Web Based Visual Exploration of Patent Information

Patents are an invaluable source of scientific and technological information. Due to the strongly increasing number of patent applications and the broadening of the objectives of patent analysis, there is a great demand for ubiquitous access to patent information and for flexible visualizations meeting the requirements of different groups of users. In this paper we propose new visualization techniques for patent information and approaches for interactively exploring this information in web based environments. We show how these visualizations can be integrated into existing web portals by using a new paradigm that we call Semantic Lens.