An R&D knowledge management method for patent document summarization Amy J.C. Trappey Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, and Charles V. Trappey Department of Management Science, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan Abstract Purpose – In an era of rapidly expanding digital content, the number of e-documents and the amount of knowledge frequently overwhelm the R&D teams and often impede intellectual property management. The purpose of this paper is to develop an automatic patent summarization method for accurate knowledge abstraction and effective R&D knowledge management. Design/methodology/approach – This paper develops an integrated approach for automatic patent summary generation combining the concepts of key phrase recognition and significant information density. Significant information density is defined based on the domain-specific key concepts/phrases, relevant phrases, title phrases, indicator phrases and topic sentences of a given patent document. Findings – The document compression ratio and the knowledge retention ratio are used to measure both quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the new summarization methodology. Both measurements indicate the significant benefits and superior results of the method. Research limitations/implications – In order to implement the methodology with practical success, the accurate and efficient pre-processing of identifying key concepts and relevant phrases of patent documents is required. The approach relies on a powerful text-mining engine as the pre-process module for key phrase extraction. Practical implications – The methodology helps R&D companies consistently and automatically process, extract and summarize the core knowledge of related patent documents. This enabling technology is critical to R&D companies when they are competing to create new technologies and products for short life cycle marketplaces. Originality/value – This research addresses a new perspective in R&D knowledge management, particularly in solving the knowledge-overloading issue. The methodology helps R&D collaborative teams consistently to summarize the core knowledge of patent documents with efficiency. Efficient R&D knowledge management helps the firm to take advantage of IP positioning while avoiding patent conflict and infringement. Keywords Document handling, Knowledge management, Information management, Intellectual property Paper type Research paper The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm This research was partially supported by Taiwan National Science Council and Ministry of Economic Affairs research grants. The authors also wish to acknowledge Mr Burges H.S. Kao’s technical support in prototyping and testing the summarization algorithm. R&D knowledge management method 245 Received 29 July 2007 Revised 24 September 2007 Accepted 9 October 2007 Industrial Management & Data Systems Vol. 108 No. 2, 2008 pp. 245-257 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0263-5577 DOI 10.1108/02635570810847608