Technological indicators of nanocellulose advances obtained from data and text mining applied to patent documents

Nanocellulose is remarkable cellulose-based nanomaterials that have a potential for innovation and sustainable appeal. Their advances can be assessed using patent indicators and text mining techniques. The aim of this study was at analyzing the advances in nanocellulose based on indicators compiled from patents filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 2000 to 2012. Assignees, technological subjects, highly cited patents, applications and types of nanocellulose were obtained by mining structured and unstructured data. The results highlighted the different interests in the USA market, mainly after 2007. Mined terms from titles and abstracts could add further information to the analysis. However, although the method applied was useful, it was not sufficient to identify all applications and types of nanocellulose involved in the sample analyzed, therefore it is recommended that other document parts be included in future analyses.