PatentBERT: Patent Classification with Fine-Tuning a pre-trained BERT Model

14 May 2019  ·  Jieh-Sheng Lee, Jieh Hsiang ·

In this work we focus on fine-tuning a pre-trained BERT model and applying it to patent classification. When applied to large datasets of over two millions patents, our approach outperforms the state of the art by an approach using CNN with word embeddings. In addition, we focus on patent claims without other parts in patent documents. Our contributions include: (1) a new state-of-the-art method based on pre-trained BERT model and fine-tuning for patent classification, (2) a large dataset USPTO-3M at the CPC subclass level with SQL statements that can be used by future researchers, (3) showing that patent claims alone are sufficient for classification task, in contrast to conventional wisdom.

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Datasets


Task Dataset Model Metric Name Metric Value Global Rank Benchmark
Multi-Label Text Classification USPTO-3M BERT F1 66.83% # 1

Methods