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The R&D output and global commercialization of intellectual properties (IPs), especially patents filed in many countries, have increased dramatically over the past decade. The overwhelming growth in research and IP activities has led to a major challenge to understand and forecast technology development insights and trends. Evidence-based data analytics is essential for technology mining. The assessment of patent values is a critical aspect of technology mining, which remains a highly subjective task performed by domain experts. As businesses become globalized, subjectivity in underlying assessments of large volumes of patent documents leads to overpriced or undervalued IP sales or licensing that exposes stakeholders to legal and financial risks. Thus, the development of intelligent methods for patent valuation requires new research emphasis. This article applies a deep learning analytical method for automatic and intelligent patent value estimation. Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to identify significant patent value indicators from the given patent dataset. Then, deep neural networks (DNN) for value prediction are modeled and trained using the training set. A detailed case study of 6466 manufacturing Internet of Things (IoT) patents is analyzed to demonstrate the improved results of building PCA-preprocessed DNN models to perform patent valuations. Finally, selected higher value IoT patents owned by leading Taiwan assignees are identified and analyzed to verify the technological competitive intelligence.

This paper is a formal overview of standards and patents for Internet of Things (IoT) as a key enabler for the next generation advanced manufacturing, referred as Industry 4.0 (I 4.0). IoT at the fundamental level is a means of connecting physical objects to the Internet as a ubiquitous network that enables objects to collect and exchange information. The manufacturing industry is seeking versatile manufacturing service provisions to overcome shortened product life cycles, increased labor costs, and fluctuating customer needs for competitive marketplaces. This paper depicts a systematic approach to review IoT technology standards and patents. The thorough analysis and overview include the essential standard landscape and the patent landscape based on the governing standards organizations for America, Europe and China where most global manufacturing bases are located. The literature of emerging IoT standards from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the Guobiao standards (GB), and global patents issued in US, Europe, China and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are systematically presented in this study.

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are a collection of transformative technologies for managing interconnected physical and computational capabilities. Recent developments in technology are increasing the availability and affordability of sensors, data acquisition systems, and computer networks. The competitive nature of industry requires manufacturers to implement new methodologies. CPS is a broad area of engineering which supports applications across industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare, electric power grids, agriculture, and transportation. In particular, CPS is the core technology enabling the transition from Industry 3.0 to Industry 4.0 (I 4.0) and is transforming global advanced manufacturing. This paper provides a consolidated review of the latest CPS literature, a complete review of international standards, and a complete analysis of patent portfolios related to the 5C’s CPS architecture model by Lee et al. The critical evaluation of international standards and the intellectual property contained in CPS patents is unaddressed by the previous research and will benefit both academic scholars and industry practitioners. The analysis provides a basis for predicting research and development future trends and helps policy makers manage technology changes that will result from CPS in I 4.0. This paper covers the emerging I 4.0 standards from the International Organization for Standardization, the International Electrotechnical Commission, and China’s Guobiao standards followed by a patent analysis covering global patents issued in the U.S., Europe, China, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Patent analysis helps companies understand their intellectual property (IP) portfolio and develop competitive marketing and management strategies. A Technology Function Matrix (TFM) is a critical approach for patent data analytics. This paper develops a generic computer supported TFM construction methodology that can be used for creating patent technical maps for any given domain. The approach is adopted for the case of the Internet of Things (IoT) patent technology analysis in the context of Industry 4.0 [1]. The aim of this article is to provide the methodology and analysis methods for IoT patent TFM and introduce computer supported IP and patent knowledge e-discovery.