Abstract: It can be said that the modern age of patent analytics started in 2003 when the discipline was the theme of the PIUG Annual Conference in Chicago. That year, and the proceeding few saw the publication of seminal papers on the topic appearing in World Patent Information (WPI).

My keynote address at PIUG 2003 was entitled, Patent Analysis: The Once and Future Discipline, and it sought to share the earliest foundations of patent analysis with current patent information professionals who were mostly focused on patent information retrieval. The talk also shared some perspectives on the future of the discipline and how it might impact the lives of patent information professionals as they developed in their careers. In 17 years a lot has changed and patent analysis has continued to grow and evolve as a discipline. This talk will focus on the advances made in the field in the last 16 years, and once again speculate on what the future may hold for analysts and the broader patent information community. In particular, the impact of semantic and machine learning technologies will be discussed and suggestions made on how they will change the way patent analytics is conducted in the future.