Systems and methods for analyzing patent-related documents

1. A method of providing patent-related documents having at least one property type to a user, the method comprising:

displaying, in a first graphical element, identifiers of patent-related documents, wherein the patent-related documents comprise at least one of a patent and a patent application;

analyzing, by at least one processor, the patent-related documents to determine at least one property value for the property type, the property value comprising a string of one or more words describing at least one technical aspect of the patent-related documents and occurring in a first subset of the patent-related documents;

displaying a second graphical element associated with the property type, the second graphical element including the property value;

receiving, at the second graphical element, a selected property value selected by the user;

analyzing, by the at least one processor, a corpus of patent-related documents to determine at least one variant of the selected property value, the variant being a string of one or more words occurring in a second subset of the patent-related documents that is used interchangeably with respect to a meaning of the technical aspect of the selected property value within the corpus of patent-related documents such that the at least one variant is used to refer to the technical aspect described by the selected property value;

rendering unselectable one or more property values that do not coexist in the corpus of patent-related documents with the selected property value by greying out the one or more property values that do not coexist in the corpus of patent-related documents and reordering one or more remaining property values that are selectable;

displaying, in the first graphical element, identifiers of the first subset of the patent-related documents in which the selected property value and the at least one variant occurs;

receiving a user selection identifying a document section of one or more patent-related documents of the first subset of the patent-related documents as one of:

all claims in a claim set;

a claim thread of interdependent claims, or

independent claims; and

displaying, in the first graphical element, those of the patent-related documents that include one or more selected claim elements, or variants of the selected claim elements, in the selected document section.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the property value comprises at least one of: a part, a term, or a phrase.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the property value comprises a claim element.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the corpus of patent-related documents is one of:

patents or patent applications stored in a database,

the patent-related documents that were displayed in the first graphical element, or

at least one class of patents or patent applications.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

displaying a full text patent-related document that includes both the selected property value and the variant, wherein the patent-related document comprises a patent or a patent application; and

highlighting the selected property value and the variant with a common identifier in the full text patent-related document.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second graphical element includes a plurality of selected property values, the method further comprising:

ranking the selected property values in accordance with a number of the patent-related documents in which the selected property values occur; and

ordering the selected property values in the second graphical element according to the ranking.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein displaying identifiers of the first subset of the patent-related documents associated with the selected property value further comprises:

displaying related metadata with the identifiers, the metadata comprising an identification of independent claims and dependent claims in the first subset of the patent-related documents in which the selected property value occurs.

8. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising program instructions which, when executed by at least one processor, cause the processor to perform a method of providing patent-related documents having at least one property type to a user, the method comprising:

displaying, in a first graphical element, identifiers of patent-related documents, wherein the patent-related documents comprise at least one of a patent and a patent application;

analyzing the patent-related documents to determine at least one property value for the property type, the property value comprising a string of one or more words describing at least one technical aspect of the patent-related documents and occurring in a first subset of the patent-related documents;

displaying a second graphical element associated with the property type, the second graphical element including the property value;

receiving, at the second graphical element, a selected property value selected by the user;

analyzing, by the at least one processor, a corpus of patent-related documents to determine at least one variant of the selected property value, the variant being a string of one or more words occurring in a second subset of the patent-related documents that is used interchangeably with respect to a meaning of the technical aspect of the selected property value within the corpus of patent-related documents such that the at least one variant is used to refer to the technical aspect described by the selected property value;

rendering unselectable one or more property values that do not coexist in the corpus of patent-related documents with the selected property value by greying out the one or more property values that do not coexist in the corpus of patent-related documents and reordering one or more remaining property values that are selectable;

displaying, in the first graphical element, identifiers of the first subset of the patent-related documents in which the selected property value and the at least one variant occurs;

receiving a user selection identifying a document section of one or more patent-related documents of the first subset of the patent-related documents as one of:

all claims in a claim set;

a claim thread of interdependent claims, or

independent claims; and

displaying, in the first graphical element, those of the patent-related documents that include one or more selected claim elements, or variants of the selected claim elements, in the selected document section.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 , wherein the corpus of patent-related documents is one of:

patents or patent applications stored in a database,

the patent-related documents that were displayed in the first graphical element, or

at least one class of patents or patent applications.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 , the method further comprising:

displaying a full text patent-related document that includes both the selected property value and the variant, wherein the patent-related document comprises a patent or a patent application; and

highlighting the selected property value and the variant with a common identifier in the full text patent-related document.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 8 , wherein the second graphical element includes a plurality of selected property values, the method further comprising:

ranking the selected property values in accordance with a number of the patent-related documents in which the selected property values occur; and

ordering the selected property values in the second graphical element according to the ranking.

12. A method of providing patent-related documents having at least one property type to a user, the method comprising:

retrieving, from a storage, patent-related documents, wherein the patent-related documents comprise at least one of a patent and a patent application;

analyzing, by at least one processor, the patent-related documents to determine at least one property value for the property type, the property value comprising a string of one or more words describing at least one technical aspect of the patent-related documents and occurring in a first subset of the patent-related documents;

analyzing a corpus of patent-related documents to determine at least one variant of the property type, the variant being a string of one or more words occurring in a second subset of the patent-related documents that is used interchangeably with respect to a meaning of the technical aspect of the property value within the corpus of patent-related documents such that the at least one variant is used to refer to the technical aspect described by the property value, wherein analyzing the corpus of patent-related documents to determine at least one variant of the property value comprises:

identifying a first drawing element in an identified patent-related document, the first drawing element including a part and a first reference, wherein the patent-related document comprises a patent or a patent application;

identifying a second drawing element in the identified patent-related document, the second drawing element including a different part and a second reference; and

associating the part with the different part as variants when the first reference and the second reference are the same;

displaying, in a first graphical element identifiers of the patent-related documents;

displaying a second graphical element associated with the property type, the second graphical element including the property value;

receiving, at the second graphical element, a selected property value selected by the user;

in response to the user selection:

rendering unselectable one or more property values that do not coexist in the corpus of patent-related documents with the selected property value by greying out the one or more property values that do not coexist in the corpus of patent-related documents,

reordering one or more remaining property values that are selectable, and

displaying a third graphical element with the variant;

receiving a user selection of the variant; and

displaying, in the first graphical element, identifiers of the first subset in which the property value occurs and identifiers of the second subset in which the variant occurs.