A system, method, and computer program product for processing data are
described herein. The system maintains first databases of patents, and
second databases of non-patent information of interest to a corporate
entity. The system also maintains one or more groups. Each of the groups
comprises any number of the patents from the first databases. The system,
upon receiving appropriate operator commands, automatically processes the
patents in one of the groups in conjunction with non-patent information
from the second databases. Accordingly, the system performs patent-centric
and group-oriented processing of data. A group can also include any number
of non-patent documents. The groups may be product based, person based,
corporate entity based, or user-defined. Other types of groups are also
covered, such as temporary groups. The processing automatically performed
by the system relates to (but is not limited to) patent mapping, document
mapping, patent citation (both forward and backward), patent aging, patent
bracketing/clustering (both forward and backward), inventor patent count,
inventor employment information, patent claim tree analysis, and finance.
Other functions and capabilities are also covered, including the ability
to utilize hyperbolic trees to visualize data generated by the system,
method, and computer program product.