技術的變動影響企業的研發計劃、甚至改變市場或產品的範籌，進而決定企業的經營策略。如何分析技術創新的過程與軌跡，並預測產業技術發展的趨勢，是專利管理的重要課題。專利分析是觀察技術發展的可行途徑之一。本研究提出一個以專利相似性為基礎的分析方法來辨識產業中具突破創新型的專利，以協助研發計劃與經營策略的擬定。本研究首先以專利間的引用關係定義二種評估專利相似性的指標，再分別比較每一筆專利與同期、後期專利相似性的變化做為評估專利的創新度的基礎，最後發展出一個辨識具突破創新型特性專利的方法論。再利用所提出之方法對台灣半導體製造業專利創新程度進行評量。分析台積電、聯電二家公司1995/1/1 ~2006/12/31期間，於美國專利局(USPTO)申請核準6276筆專利。研究結果顯示，這兩家公司在銅製程(專利號:6329234、6528428), 記憶體(專利號: 6046086、6093608、6187624) 製程有有重大創新。The technology development impacts the market structure and product scopes, which forces company to revise its business plan. A correct forecast on the technology development helps company to correctly make its R&D plans. Hence, how to identify the evolving path of the technology development is one of the critical issues in the technology management. Analyzing patent information is one of the ways to observe the evolving path of the technology development. In this paper, we propose a new method to identify innovated patents through years. By observing the development of these innovated patents, company can learn the technology evolving path and then assist the company to make its R&D plans. To identify an innovated patent, the method compares patents against patents issued at the same year and after. The deviation in the similarity between them can be employs to identify the innovated patent which is significant different from others. A case study on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and united Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) is provided to demonstrate the proposed method. Patents issued from January 1, 1995 to December 31, 2006 are queried from USPTO database with totally 6,276 patents. The results show that the two companies have achieve radical innovations in copper-interconnect technology (patent #6329234 and 6528428) and memory(patent #: 6046086、6093608、6187624)
