Honda Motor Co., Ltd. announced last year (see our article from that time) that it would be testing an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system to review and cull its massive patent portfolio, in the interest of cutting costs and simpler decision making time. Recently, on July 30, 2020, it announced its cursory findings that AI did an acceptably good job of selecting patents to maintain and could save time on the labor by 70%.
Honda Motor Co., Ltd.’s Bessho Hirokazu (General Manager of Corporate IP Division, IP and Standardization Supervisory Unit) commented that the AI system they have been using matched their human analysts on 85% of the cases they reviewed. He said that Honda would use a “hybrid” decision-making process, with humans reviewing any patents that the AI rejected. Even with this remaining human labor, Mr. Bessho estimated that Honda could cut the time needed for deciding which patents to keep and which to abandon by 70%, leaving its employees more time for more important decisions.
Honda’s worldwide patent portfolio is on the scale of 50,000 patents and expects to see large increases in the People’s Republic of China. The AI system reviews the markets, relations of patents to competitors’ technology, and the level of innovation to come to a rounded decision on whether to renew or abandon a patent as it faces the time for payment of annuities.
Honda’s hybrid of AI-based and human-reviewed patent analysis is a model for IP management that keeps people busy, Bessho hopes, focused on more satisfying and enjoyable work than the mundane decisions that computers can do.
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Taro Yaguchi
Sources
IKEHARA Teruo. “ホンダ、知財管理にAI導入—維持に関する業務量を7割減 [Honda implements AI in its IP management, to cut work needed for maintenance by 70%].” Response. https://response.jp/article/2020/07/31/337066.html July 31, 2020. Accessed August 4, 2020.
Head image: Image by StockSnap from Pixabay.
