Systems and Methods for Using Non-Textual Information In Analyzing Patent Matters

A computer-implemented similarity system that assessing similarity between patent matters, the system comprising:

• a patent-matter-proceeding-graph similarity module that:
• receives as an input a patent portfolio comprising one or more patent matters;
• is communicatively coupled to a data store comprising one or more patent-matter-proceeding graphs, a patent-matter-proceeding graph comprising:
• one or more nodes, each node representing a proceeding and having one or more associated attributes wherein at least one of the associated attributes is a patent matter at issue for the proceeding, and
• links joining two nodes that share an associated attribute;
• and
• outputs a distance measure between a patent matter at issue that is an associated attribute of a node in a patent-matter-proceeding graph and a patent matter in the patent portfolio that is also an associated attribute in a node in the patent-matter-proceeding graph;
• and
• a meta classifier that receives the distance measure and assigns a similarity score to the patent matter at issue using the distance measure.

A computer-implemented method for creating non-textual representation related to patent matter proceeding or proceedings, the method comprising:

• gathering data from one or more databases containing patent matter proceedings;
• for each proceeding of at least some of the patent matter proceedings, extracting a set of patent-matter-proceeding information, the set of patent-matter-proceeding information comprising one or more patent matters at issue in the proceeding and one or more entities involved in the proceeding;
• generating one or more nodes using at least some of the patent-matter-proceeding information, each node comprising a set of associated attributes;
• and
• constructing a graph by linking nodes based upon a shared attribute from the nodes' sets of associated attributes.