Abstract:

In recent years, there has been a variety of research aimed at the use of patent-related documents that are publicly available on the Japan Patent Office website, such as notifications of reasons for refusal, to support corporate patent strategy. On the other hand, activation of a “cycle of intellectual creation” made up of the phases of “creation,” “protection,” and “use” is essential to realize the “nation based on intellectual property” that Japan advocates. Further, the development of human resources to support a wide variety of intellectual property-related work required in the above mentioned phases is called for. For example, there is a need to develop people who can handle patent examination in the “protection” phase. To acquire this skill, both knowledge of the patent law and the sharpening of expertise in the thought process and understanding of the complex interplay of the individual issues through written communication with the examiners are indispensable along with the development of the most appropriate response for this situation. Therefore, in this study, we aim to systematize the knowledge and thought process required to obtain the patent examination handling skill from examples such as notifications of reasons for refusal and opinions exchanged between examiners and applicants. We extract the concepts that constitute the documentation, knowledge, and thought processes on the basis of ontological engineering. Further, we elicit the relationship between these concepts by using the patent examination handling ontology. Thus, we can clarify the knowledge that the examiners and the applicants use, their understanding of this knowledge, and the related thought process for patent examination handling. We have analyzed actual patent examination handling examples based on ontological engineering, and actualized through patent examination handling ontology, the knowledge and thought processes required to gain patent examination handling skill. The patent examination handling ontology expresses how knowledge such as reference information and documents including notifications of reasons for refusal as input and the output information concerning patent examination handling is related to the thought process. By actualizing these relationships, one can understand what knowledge the examiners and the applicants use, how it is understood, and what their thought process is. Moreover, since individual examples of patent examination handling are systematized in response to the patent examination handling ontology through patent examination patterns, we believe that knowledge from experience in patent examination handling is included in the patent examination handling ontology.Thus, we could clarify the knowledge that the examiners and the applicants use, their understanding of this knowledge, and the related thought process for patent examination handling. Based on the ontology, we have designed a learning environment to develop patent examination handling thinking process. In the paper, we will show the learning goal and learning strategies as a design intention of the environment.

Keywords:

Learning environment.