Assessing future technological impacts of patents based on the classification algorithms in machine learning: The case of electric vehicle domain

INTRODUCTION: Identifying the technologies that will drive technological changes over the coming years is important for the optimal allocation of firms’ R&D resources and the deployment of innovation strategies. The citation frequency of a patent is widely recognized as representative of the patent’s value. Thus, identifying potential highly cited patents is an important goal. A number of studies have attempted to distinguish highly cited patents from others based on statistical models, but a more effective and applicable method needs to be further developed. METHODS: This paper treats the prediction of later patent citations as a classification problem and proposes a novel framework based on machine learning methods. First, a indices system to identify highly cited patents is constructed using multiple factors that are believed to influence citation frequency. Second, various machine learning models are utilized to identify highly cited patents. The optimized model with the best generalization capability is selected to predict the future impacts of newly applied patents, which may be representative of emerging significant technologies. Finally, we select the electric vehicle (EV) domain as a case study to empirically test the validity of this framework. RESULTS: The optimized support vector machine (SVM) model performs well in identifying highly cited EV patents. Technological frontiers in the EV domain are identified, which are related to the topics of information systems, batteries, stability control, wireless charging, and vehicle operation. DISCUSSION: The good performance in prediction accuracy and generalization capability of the method proposed in this paper verifies its effectiveness and feasibility.