How can I put together my own technology landscapes?

Briefly, the steps are:

• first to decide on the scope of the topic
• identify databases (patent literature and scientific literature and others) to search (it's important to know the scope of the databases, because a good search will leave important documents out if the database isn't comprehensive)
• design search criteria to find documents of interest (terminology to search in the text, names of inventors and companies active in the field, etc.)
• review the documents in the search output, and refine the search.  This step may need to be repeated multiple times with multiple search criteria.
• identify the output documents that have relevance to the topic
• review the status, ownership, and history of each relevant patent document, and perhaps related documents
• analyse the claims

These steps aren't straightforward because patent searching and claim language can be very complex, but with the patent search and tutorials of the Patent Lens, we are trying to make this process increasingly transparent.

If you have patent informatics, patent searching, or claims analysis expertise, you may be interested in contributing to the development of the Patent Lens - contact us.