Patent mapping is a graphical method of visualizing patent data. The purpose of graphically modeling this data is to help companies to identify the patents that are particularly relevant to the technology that they are involved in. It also helps to identify the relationship between these patents and identify if there are any places that they might be in infringement. There is an overarching subject that incorporates information portrayal about patents called patinformatics. It is defined as "the science of analyzing information to discover relationships and trends that would be difficult to see when working with patent documents on a one-to-one basis".
