JapanPublic sector2018 – ongoingJapan Patent Office
AI classification of foreign patent documents
Japan Patent Office used AI to make foreign patent documents searchable under Japanese classifications
Problem
Patent examiners needed to search Japanese and foreign documents together. Japan's own classification systems provided detailed search categories that also needed to cover foreign material.
Approach
The office used AI to assign FI and F-term classifications automatically to foreign patent documents. These shared classifications allowed examiners to search domestic and foreign documents together.
Results
No published figures
Takeaway
The operational benefit came from applying a common search structure across document collections. The office did not quantify time savings or classification accuracy.
Categories
- Industry
- Public sector
- Business function
- Internal work and knowledge management
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Predictive analytics and ML
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
The office confirmed that AI classification was already used in patent examination. It explained that automatically assigning FI and F-term classifications enabled combined searches of Japanese and foreign patent documents.
Full details are in the original sources.
