Is there a correlation between the claims made in a patent and the investment decisions made by venture capitalists in terms of which startups they choose to back? This is a question that machine learning techniques may help answer given the public availability of patent applications and grant documents and web-based aggregators of startup company information. Understanding the relationship may prove useful to startups pursuing venture capital, venture capital firms seeking to measure potential investment opportunities, and policymakers trying to understand innovation dynamics in local, regional, and national economies.

• Improve text-cleaning functions
• Make more object-oriented
• Expand data collection