Abstract: Patents contain rich design knowledge. Different patent knowledge means different values in creative design. Proper evaluation of patent design knowledge can assist designers to make creative design quickly and effectively. According to the study of the characteristics of patent design knowledge, the principle design knowledge and structural design knowledge of a patent can be represented with verbs and nouns. By introducing the concept of information entropy, the evaluation method of the novelty degree and compatible degree of patent design knowledge is proposed. Moreover, the novelty evaluation model of the combination of patent design knowledge is constructed by combining with the morphological analysis. The creative design process based on the morphological matrix is illustrated with the creative design of a self-locking straight line drive mechanism. The feasibility and practicality of the evaluation method of the novelty degree and compatible degree and the evaluation model of the combination of patent design knowledge are verified by comparing and analyzing the different evaluation results caused by the change of the number of patents and design knowledge words.

Key words: Compatible degree, Morphological analysis, Novelty degree, Patent design knowledge