Patent Infringement Risk Analysis Using Rough Set Theory

Patent infringement risk is a significant issue for corporations due to the increased appreciation of intellectual property rights. If a corporation gives insufficient protection to its patents, it may loss both profits from product, and industry competitiveness. Many studies on patent infringement have focused on measuring the patent trend indicators and the patent monetary value. However, very few studies have attempted to develop a categorization mechanism for measuring and evaluating the patent infringement risk, for example, the categorization of the patent infringement cases, then to determine the significant attributes and introduce the infringement decision rules. This study applies Rough Set Theory (RST), which is suitable for processing qualitative information to induce rules to derive significant attributes for categorization of the patent infringement risk. Moreover, through the use of the concept hierarchy and the credibility index, it can be integrated with RST and then enhance application of the finalized decision rules.