12. A method for use with a group of patents retrieved from a data warehouse, the group of retrieved patents related to a given seed patent from an originating industry, the method comprising: extracting a set of similar patents from said group of retrieved patents, each of said similar patents associated with said given seed patent using a statistical method; classifying said given seed patent and said set of similar patents by at least one of assignees and industries; generating an industry taxonomy for said given seed patent and said set of similar patents using at least one of a structured feature and an unstructured feature; mapping assignees of said similar patents to related industries using said industry taxonomy; computing the overall similarity between said originating industry and said related industries; and computing patent similarity between said seed patent and patents assigned to said related industries.
15. The method of claim 12 further comprising identifying potential licensee targets by comparing said overall similarity and said patent similarity using said assignee classification.