Patent Figure Classification using Large Vision-language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Awale, Sushil, Müller-Budack, Eric, Ewerth, Ralph
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Awale, Sushil
Müller-Budack, Eric
Ewerth, Ralph
author_facet Awale, Sushil
Müller-Budack, Eric
Ewerth, Ralph
contents Patent figure classification facilitates faceted search in patent retrieval systems, enabling efficient prior art search. Existing approaches have explored patent figure classification for only a single aspect and for aspects with a limited number of concepts. In recent years, large vision-language models (LVLMs) have shown tremendous performance across numerous computer vision downstream tasks, however, they remain unexplored for patent figure classification. Our work explores the efficacy of LVLMs in patent figure visual question answering (VQA) and classification, focusing on zero-shot and few-shot learning scenarios. For this purpose, we introduce new datasets, PatFigVQA and PatFigCLS, for fine-tuning and evaluation regarding multiple aspects of patent figures~(i.e., type, projection, patent class, and objects). For a computational-effective handling of a large number of classes using LVLM, we propose a novel tournament-style classification strategy that leverages a series of multiple-choice questions. Experimental results and comparisons of multiple classification approaches based on LVLMs and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in few-shot settings show the feasibility of the proposed approaches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_12751
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Patent Figure Classification using Large Vision-language Models
Awale, Sushil
Müller-Budack, Eric
Ewerth, Ralph
Information Retrieval
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Patent figure classification facilitates faceted search in patent retrieval systems, enabling efficient prior art search. Existing approaches have explored patent figure classification for only a single aspect and for aspects with a limited number of concepts. In recent years, large vision-language models (LVLMs) have shown tremendous performance across numerous computer vision downstream tasks, however, they remain unexplored for patent figure classification. Our work explores the efficacy of LVLMs in patent figure visual question answering (VQA) and classification, focusing on zero-shot and few-shot learning scenarios. For this purpose, we introduce new datasets, PatFigVQA and PatFigCLS, for fine-tuning and evaluation regarding multiple aspects of patent figures~(i.e., type, projection, patent class, and objects). For a computational-effective handling of a large number of classes using LVLM, we propose a novel tournament-style classification strategy that leverages a series of multiple-choice questions. Experimental results and comparisons of multiple classification approaches based on LVLMs and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in few-shot settings show the feasibility of the proposed approaches.
title Patent Figure Classification using Large Vision-language Models
topic Information Retrieval
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.12751