Forecasting technology development based on patent information

It is to an advantage of manufacturers to forecast the next generation tech nology as precisely as possible in this survival and competition age. The m ost popular way follows the trend of technology of interest and the result of fundamental research. While reliable, this approach can predict only the short term future and cannot consider hidden, heuristic development by com petitors, because the information concerned is rather limited in a certain organization. On the other hand, patent information is much more reliable a nd feasible as inventions are generated from fundamental research conducted all over the world. The present paper makes it clear that patent informati on can yield fruitful results such as a predicted year of commercialization for a particular technology, if the patent information is properly process ed. A method for grouping the technology field, summing up the patent infor mation, and forecasting the year of realization of a specified technology i s proposed and examined in the current paper.