Patent Map points out the direction of technological development for enterprises, summarizes and analyzes technology distribution trends, and can especially be used to monitor the distribution of competitors' patented technologies, allowing enterprises to know themselves and their enemies. Enterprises use patent maps not only for intellectual property management, but also for marketing management and technological innovation management. Many companies produce industry patent maps as a basis for guiding their own R&D and competitive directions and as a tool for researching their opponents.
Patent maps have long been valued and utilized in developed countries and regions. Among them, Japan has the deepest level of research and the widest range of applications. Japan began research on patent maps in the 1960s. In 1968 In 2017, the Japan Patent Office published Japan's first patent map, which can show the way technology functionality and applications are expanded, and can find the connections between them through the changes in patents over time. Subsequently, the application of patent maps gradually expanded to industry. In order to implement corporate science and technology development strategies, develop new business opportunities and further promote the use of patent information, the Japanese government has collected and analyzed patent information in many technical fields over the past two decades to create patent maps and put these maps online for free . Only a very small number of companies in my country use patent maps to serve them. One of the important factors is that most companies do not understand patent maps.