US patent hierarchy visualization

a detailed infographic map that displays the United States Patent & Trademark Office patent classification, which organizes 3 million patents into about 160,000 distinct patent classes. exemplarily shown are 2 patents, together with, respectively, their prior art & impact.

the taxonomy visualization shows the organization schema as a hierarchy in which sublevels are indented according to their depth in the hierarchy. item properties are represented by bar graphs on the left-hand side of the schema. item & class interrelations are denoted by line overlays.

[link: gigapan.org & scimaps.org]