A Multilayered Approach to Constructing a Patent Field of Technology Ontology
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Conventional classification systems struggle to represent the rapid advancement of technology and the increasing prevalence of interdisciplinary research, necessitating more dynamic and comprehensive approaches to organizing technological knowledge. This article presents a methodology for constructing a multilayered Field of Technology (FOT) ontology that explicitly separates a static layer and a dynamic layer. The static layer is grounded in the International Patent Classification (IPC) and enriched with Wikipedia, providing a stable foundation of core technological domains. For the dynamic layer, we derive technical concepts from English-language patent titles in the Google Patents Public Data using a custom NER model (PatentNER), and organize them through a hierarchical construction method that integrates density-based and hierarchical clustering. The resulting ontology comprises a multi-level hierarchy in which more than half of the dynamic concepts span multiple technical domains. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to construct such a large-scale, hierarchical FOT ontology directly from patent data, providing a scalable and adaptable resource for understanding the complex and interdisciplinary nature of modern technologies.
DOI: 10.1145/3803791
Authors: Xuchun Qiu, Yatong Zhou
Institution: Hebei University of Technology
Language: English
Topic: Semantic Web and Ontologies
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7141124350