TRIZ-based patent investigation by evaluating inventiveness

Among TRIZ users the importance given to patent resources is far behind the mere protection of R&D results. Patents represent a starting point for new inventions and a huge resource for collecting information on the way contradictions have been solved and in which different field such solutions may be adopted. Moreover the worldwide patent database contains information about the technology evolution that can be extracted so that the level of maturity of a product or process can be evaluated towards TRIZ laws of technical evolution. The contribution of this paper is to provide a step by step procedure, partially automatic, to perform TRIZ oriented patent search. The procedure, while determining the level of innovation of patents, allows defining a sharp set of patents responding to a structured query. The procedure has been applied to several case studies of different fields (e.g. mechanical, medical, and electronics) and a significant example referring to X-rays technology is shown in the paper. © 2008, Springer New York LLC. All rights reserved.