The Web Edition of the PIUG newsletter provides selected content from the
PIUG newsletter distributed to PIUG members. Any opinions expressed in the articles are
solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of PIUG, Inc. or
any of its Officers and Board Members.
Winter is drawing to a close and so is my time as Newsletter Editor. In my first editorial, for the November 2000 issue, I spoke of changes happening to the newsletter. With this issue, more changes are taking place; the editorial team of Nurdan Atalay, Assistant Editor and Suzanne Elsoffer, Newsletter Advisor has welcomed a new member, Diane Webb, as Production Editor. One immediate result of Diane’s participation is the improved quality of the graphics and print in this issue; we are very fortunate that she agreed to join us! As well, I am very happy to hand the editorial reins over to the capable hands of Megan Charlesworth. Megan has already made a significant contribution to the newsletter in initiating the new Vendor’s Corner column, in which Nancy Lambert compiles and comments on updates from vendors on what’s new in patent information products. I expect that more good changes are on the way and I am looking forward to seeing them in future issues.
I think we have put together a very interesting issue for you. Aside from Nancy Lambert’s new Vendor’s Corner column, Simon Ware has written a wonderful article on the Australian Innovation Patent. As well, Lucy Akers invites us to encourage our companies to help support PIUG by making corporate donations and provides an outline of the general principles used in the organization of PIUG meetings. We also have news items from members and Lucy Akers’ Message from the Chair. One sad piece of news is the recent unfortunate passing of Mike O’Hara, a valued and active PIUG member from whom I’m sure many of us have received training and help with searching the MMS databases. He will be missed, as is evident from the words written by Val Metanomski and Sandy Burcham.
As many of you prepare to attend the 2002 PIUG Annual Meeting in Berkeley, California, you may be interested in the agenda and abstracts for the meeting, provided by Lucy Akers. For those of you who were unable to attend the 2001 Northeast Workshop, held last October at ExxonMobil in Annandale, NJ, Cathy Misner has written a detailed report, illustrated with photos taken by Sandra Unger, and Randall Ward has compiled an analysis of the feedback received at the meeting. Elyse Turner has also taken this opportunity to pass on information about the 2002 Northeast Workshop, including a registration form at the end of the newsletter, and to thank those who helped with the 2001 Workshop. (I, too, would like to thank Don Walter, John Hack and Sandra Unger for their kindness and help with my own transportation problems at the workshop.) Stephen Adams also kindly provided an informative report on the 2001 EPIDOS conference in Cardiff, Wales.
You will notice that the PIUG salary survey form has been included with the newsletter, thanks to the hard work of Sandy Smith and Diane Webb. Your input is invaluable so please complete the form and return it in the envelopes provided to ensure your anonymity. The results of the survey are planned for publication in the Fall issue of the newsletter.
As I step down as Editor (to make a little more time for my "day job", I want to thank all the people who have been so enjoyable to work with on the newsletter over the past two years. These include Lucy Akers, who has always provided encouragement, ideas and guidance with a quiet patience; Sandra Unger, who has cheerfully provided mailing labels, photos and much more in the way of help and advice; Suzanne Robins and Ken Koubek, for their wonderful collaboration regarding the financial and membership-related aspects of the newsletter; the newsletter volunteers, Ken Koubek, Cynthia O’Donohue, and Richard Kurt and the editorial team of Nurdan Atalay, Diane Webb, and Suzanne Elsoffer, without whose excellent work and thoughtful suggestions, these issues would probably never have seen the light of day; and last but by no means least, all our contributors and readers. I will miss working with you very much and I wish you all the best of success in the future!
PIUG, Inc., The International Society for Patent Information, is very pleased to announce that the PIUG Northeast Workshop will be held October 8, 2002 at the Hilton Woodbridge, Iselin, NJ, USA. Details of the meeting and registration forms are available on the PIUG web page at http://www.piug.org/ne02meet.html.
REGISTRATION: We will begin accepting registrations after April 30, 2002. Registration is FREE for members and $30 for non-PIUG members. Registration is limited. PIUG members will be given priority for registration. If you are not currently a member, please visit our website today at http://www.piug.org/membapp.html to join. The registration deadline is September 24, 2002.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Louis O. Massel will speak on PCT patent procedures.
SPEAKERS: To be determined
POSTER SESSIONS: To be determined
TIPS & TRICKS: “Tips, Tricks, and Problems in Cross System
Searching”.
We all know that one online search system is not enough for many complex search problems.
We need to consult databases on Dialog, Questel/Orbit, STN, and perhaps Lexis, and Factiva
too, using the special search features available on each system. How does one approach
this?
VENDOR ROAST
SPONSORS: Interested sponsors may contact Andy Berks for more information.
PIUG NE Workshop KEY CONTACTS:
Elyse Turner - Committee Chair
Andy Berks - Fundraising
Sharon Brosemer - Gifts
Barbara Burg - Web pages
Isia Bursuker - Poster session
Amy Dasch - Meeting Book
Marty Goffman - Tips & Tricks
Faye Kramer - Registration
Jessica Pfennig -Evaluations
Adrienne Shanler - Vendor Roast
Ric Snead - Web pages
Sandra Unger - Program
Don Walter - Travel
Wentsai Wang - Site Logistics
Jenny Xanthos - Registration
Elyse Turner
Chair, PIUG NE Planning Committee
Greetings everyone! This is a really busy time for the organization; below are some highlights.
I am very pleased to report that we have 600 members who are active members for either 2001 or 2002. This includes at least 388 who have already renewed their membership for 2002; however, it appears that about 200 people have not yet renewed their membership. Our non-US based membership is up, with at least 90 non-U.S. based members, representing the following 17 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Thanks to everyone who has renewed their membership. Please remind your colleagues and co-workers that only active members will receive the results of the salary survey in the Fall. Thanks to Ken Koubek for all the hard work with membership renewals. We will be discussing the issue of membership renewals during the PIUG 2002 Business Meeting on Sunday, April 21 at 3:30 pm in Berkeley.
Thanks to Jeff Forman, Sandy Burcham, Sandra Unger, Ford Khorsandian, and Diane Webb for their help with the 2002 election process. We have a very exciting election this year! We are very fortunate to have excellent candidates, including Stephen Adams, Nancy Lambert, Tony Trippe, Elyse Turner, Suzanne Robins and Sandy Smith.
As I mention in the election documentation, I am looking forward to, hopefully, two more years as Chairperson for the following reasons:
We hope to have the election results at the PIUG 2002 business meeting on April 21.
Thanks to our Secretary, Sandy Smith, and the salary survey team, the results of the salary survey will appear in the Fall 2002 issue of the newsletter and will only be made available to current PIUG members. Please be sure to complete the enclosed salary survey form and return it this time!
The PIUG Board periodically uses the PIUG / PATMG discussion list to enable quick communication with the members of PIUG, Inc. I cannot stress enough the importance of the discussion list for communicating PIUG, Inc. related information. Please ensure that you are a subscriber to the list so that you will not miss out on timely updates and information, especially for updates related to our meetings, deadlines, and proposed dates for important events. A special thanks to Tracy Davis, at Derwent, for her help in maintaining the list. Also, a very special thanks to everyone who contributes technical questions and content to the list. You are the reason we have so many subscribers! Visit our web-site at www.piug.org to join the discussion list.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions for additional ways to network with our sister organizations. I can be reached at lucyakers@btopenworld.com. Look for more information about PATMG and WON during the PIUG Business Meeting on Sunday, April 21 in Berkeley.
WON - PIUG, Inc. is honored by the recent invitation to participate and speak during the Dutch Patent Information Users Group (WON) 50th Semi-Annual Meeting on April 11, 2002. Additional speakers at this meeting will include: Present Chair of WON, Bettina de Jong, the Principal Director of Documentation of the EPO, Mr. G. Giroud, possibly a representative of PATMG, and one of the chairs of ARPAD, Peter Kallas.
PATMG - Some of you may know that I have begun to participate in the PATMG committee in the UK. This has provided me with a unique opportunity for which I am grateful to Stephen Adams and Peter Steele, amongst others. After attending only a couple of meetings, it is really interesting for me to note that the PATMG organization operates quite differently from PIUG. They have several vendor representatives on the management committee, they hold more frequent meetings, and they also have more frequent informal gatherings for socializing as a group. I suppose this is facilitated by the concentration of patent information people in the London area.
Several people have recently volunteered to help with our committee activities. Sandy Smith is currently updating the committee list. The Board will review the updated list and will present details for additional discussion at the Business Meeting in April. If you haven’t contributed before to the organization’s activities, this would be a great time to start, especially as we become more active in several areas.
A special welcome to Megan Charlesworth, of Cook, Incorporated, who will step into the position of Editor in May, 2002 and also to Diane Webb, of BizInt, who has already taken on the role of Production Editor and has been going above the call of duty by helping us with other printing and mail distribution processes. We are really appreciative of their efforts as well as the ongoing efforts of Nurdan Atalay, the Assistant Editor, and Suzanne Elsoffer, the Newsletter Advisor. Finally, I wish to thank Janice Kelland for being so great to work with over the last two years and for doing a superb job as PIUG Newsletter Editor.
PIUG 2002 ANNUAL MEETING - Please see pages 22-29 for a complete update on the PIUG 2002 Annual Meeting. The meeting will feature many knowledgeable speakers including: three from the Japan Patent Office, one from the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, two from the European Patent Office, a visiting scholar with 20 years experience in the JPO on Japanese patent law, a corporate patent information user (our own Tony Trippe) providing an update on patent analysis tools, and patent attorneys from China, Korea and Australia. The conference will also feature multiple vendor updates and workshops, as well as a 90 minute talk by Stephen Adams on internet tools providing support to patent searchers. If you are serious about patent searching then you will not want to miss this opportunity for a great learning experience! Pre-registration is required, see http://www.piug.org/an02reg.html . A special thanks to Tom Stanton for all his work with the annual meeting registration and to Terri Dockter for her help with organizing the Japan patent information day!
PIUG 2002 BUSINESS MEETING - Please join us for the annual business meeting on Sunday, April 21, 2002 from 3:30-5pm at the Radisson Berkeley Marina Hotel. This is a great opportunity to experience the inner workings of a non-profit organization. Subject to full PIUG Board approval, possible agenda items include: Brief Open Floor; Election Results & Introduction of New Board; Board will proceed with the Corporation’s business on behalf of the members; Treasurer’s report (to include information about investigating options for: accepting credit card payments, Directors & Officers Insurance, and how to proceed with investigating possibility of corporate memberships); Membership Renewal Letters and Forms (should we spend the resources to do this annually? printing, mailing, etc.); Committee Reports; WON presentation; PATMG Presentation; and Recommendations for Improving Committee Processes (let’s find better ways to structure our path forward with respect to vendor relations and patent office relations).
PIUG NORTH EAST WORKSHOP 2002 - Planning is already in progress, thanks to Elyse Turner and the NE Workshop volunteers. For preliminary meeting information see page 8.
PIUG 2003 ANNUAL MEETING – Several people have already approached me with interest in our next annual meeting, including corporate patent information users & speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors. The Program Committee, together with the Planning Committee, hope to standardize some of the planning processes in an effort to help ensure a balanced meeting program and a fair process to all of our potential sponsors and exhibitors. If you are interested in joining the PIUG 2003 Planning Committee, please let me know at lucyakers@btopenworld.com. We are particularly looking for current and future volunteers to lead the following efforts: Registration, Travel Information, Publicity, Exhibits Room, Menus, Entertainment, Gifts, Audiovisual, and Conference Evaluation.
PIUG is a volunteer organization run by patent searchers (all unpaid volunteers) for the benefit of patent searchers and other patent information professionals. Meetings are organized to attract international speakers who can speak knowledgeably on topics of interest to patent searchers. Database producers and vendors are encouraged to participate, to demonstrate their products and to help offset the large expenses of the meetings. However, the overall goal is to present a slate of speakers and training opportunities that are of interest to professional patent searchers.
There’s been some discussion recently about the way in which PIUG meetings are organized. This article lists, mostly from a programming view, the five overriding principles that we have used in dealing with database producers and vendors, donations, sponsorship, the overall presentations, and workshops for our annual meetings. The principles we’ve been using are informal; we do not have a formal policy. Therefore, I have also provided some supporting statements which illustrate the past application of the overriding principles, in practice. The supporting statements are not intended as fixed and restrictive guidelines for our future meetings. Due to the flexibility required in interpreting complex situations and events involved in programming and planning our meetings, the conditions of use of any of the material in this document shall remain at the discretion of the PIUG Board and the Program Committee (see near the end of the article for more information on the role of the Program Committee).
We’ve been trying to follow the principles listed below, but from some individual perspectives, we acknowledge that we may not have always succeeded. Overall, I think we have been very effective in creating worthwhile meetings, given the high interest level and given the high attendance over a number of years.
The PIUG Board is currently considering establishing a committee to generate more formal principles for review by the Board and then by the membership, most likely during the PIUG 2003 Business Meeting. These principles would probably then apply to both the annual meetings and to our regional meetings. Please consider some of these concepts and let me or any member of the Board know your views on this important subject. Please also let us know if you are interested in participating on the committee for establishing principles.
As a relatively small organization, we are able to hold events which are generally very inclusive and welcoming. Our meetings often have single track sessions and we usually do not have concurrent sessions or multiple events taking place at the same time, unless there is good justification. There have been exceptions, but not too many. After the PIUG 2000 annual meeting, a feedback meeting was held during which the consensus was that we should continue to keep mostly single track sessions because a lot of the people had multidisciplinary interests and did not want to miss any of the sessions.
Typically, any type of exclusion of some members from a satellite meeting or any kind of event (technical or social) organized by a vendor or special interest group in association with the PIUG meeting has not been permitted wherever possible. This is in the interest of the attendees as a whole so that some groups are not selected and favored at the exclusion of others. The principle of avoiding any exclusions is an important one for the PIUG. Therefore, any event being considered in association with the PIUG meeting should be consulted with and approved by the Program Committee in advance.
We aim to recognize our meeting participants, volunteers, and other supporters by using a balanced approach which helps to ensure the continuing growth and success of our organization, yet without compromising the key principles.
Presenting multiple views helps our members to better share their ideas and also allows them to determine the best approach or tools to use in order to meet their respective current or future needs. Good examples of this include our Northeast Workshop with a “Tips & Tricks” session, as well as the traditional “Vendor Roast”. Another good example includes the PIUG 2001 annual meeting presentations from the USPTO and EPO patent examiners on combinatorial chemistry.
We recognize that our user group is most interested in technically focused presentations. Therefore, we may ask corporate representatives to modify the proposed content for their presentations (e.g. to remove proposed content regarding corporate management changes or financial positions, or to provide more focus on specific technical content), in keeping with this general principle. The Program Committee and Session Chairs have all tried very hard to avoid a pure sales pitch or product review from a vendor. Organizers have taken great efforts to ensure the talks are technical in nature and informative from the users point of view, even though a time slot may have been due to a vendor’s sponsorship of one or more events.
We make reasonable efforts to provide speakers with enough information and support to ensure an effective and well-organized meeting program. In return, speakers are expected to provide information, as needed, for generating the preliminary and subsequent agendas, abstract collections, speaker biography and contact information, as well as an advance copy of their presentation whenever possible in a timely manner. However, there are often delays!
The overall timing for presentations or other events, as well as the duration of talks or other events, is at the sole discretion of the Program Committee (see below for more information on the Program Committee). This applies whether or not the speakers or other events are from sponsoring organizations.
Times allocated for each speaker, sponsor, vendor event, training session, and workshop
and their relative order for inclusion in the program are based on the anticipated
relevancy and interest-level to the meeting attendees, as determined by the Program
Committee, and by the schedule and appropriate session availability. If there is a session
and schedule fit, preference is given to those which will be of most interest and of most
benefit to the most members of the patent information user community, at the discretion of
the Program Committee.
Invited speakers are generally subjected to less rigid requirements than uninvited
speakers. Invitations for speakers may be made in various forms, including through direct
contact with the individuals we hope to include in the program, or otherwise, such as,
through sponsorship, through one of our members, or through professional associations or
internationally known individuals or other organizations. While efforts are made to
accommodate uninvited speakers, should a potential conflict arise, invited speakers take
precedence over uninvited speakers, however, every attempt is made to reconcile a
potential conflict.
We endeavor to treat suppliers fairly, both in terms of known potential competitors, as well as in terms of known relative size. I think it is recognized that the commercial interests or size of one organization relative to another may not be fully known to the individual PIUG members who are programming or planning our events. Small and innovative companies must be further encouraged to make early and direct contact with the Program Committee during the early stages of the meeting planning process. This will allow us to better allocate space for them in the exhibits room and/or during the general session using the selection criteria mentioned previously (based on the anticipated relevancy and interest-level to the meeting attendees, as determined by the Program Committee, and by the schedule and appropriate session availability).
After considering expected costs for the PIUG 2002 annual meeting, sponsorships were solicited as follows, in an effort to keep the meeting registration fees low. In addition to our “exhibitors only group” who each donate $1000 to PIUG for the space for their table in the demo room, known potential and previously interested sponsors were essentially given the following list of opportunities for sponsorship:
Additional miscellaneous sponsorship opportunities, e.g. the conference bags and the meeting books (permitting joint use of sponsor logos together with the PIUG logo and/or PIUG information), are also offered to historically interested organizations. Conference Dinners and miscellaneous items are arranged for and paid for separately by the sponsoring organization directly with the service provider. Sponsoring organizations recognize and appreciate the value of their association with PIUG. The financial value of these may be considered as part of the sponsorship program, at the discretion of the Program Committee.
Financial or other contributions do not earn the sponsor or donor any control over the content or scheduling of events held during, or sometimes even for those events held in conjunction with, PIUG meetings. While a sponsor may be asked to provide a speaker, and occasionally a very specific speaker is requested given the known interests of our members, the timing of their talk and often even the proposed content for their abstract is suggested and overseen by the Program Committee.
If a company wants to present a whole session or workshop over one or more hours, the Program Committee may organize time for it (if there is time available during the meeting and there are no known conflicts and the proposed content for the session is of potential interest to PIUG members, as determined by the program committee). Their sessions are very often distinguishable in the program.
For events offered by sponsors or other organizations, which are held in conjunction with our meetings (i.e. either immediately before or after our meetings and where known by the Program Committee), the organization is usually asked to send us the proposed announcement in advance of the actual public announcement. We review the proposed announcement to ensure there are no conflicts or other concerns raised by the Program Committee. This is then normally followed-up with the independent publication of the announcement by the proper organization. Subsequent to independent publication, PIUG then makes reference to the event in our agenda and web updates. The PIUG website is open to everyone to help publicize the meeting.
Abstracts and other meeting information provided to PIUG by potential competitors are treated the same as for all PIUG speakers or related events (unless we are specifically asked to treat them otherwise), therefore, at a minimum these are published in our newsletter and web-site, or occasionally are published elsewhere (e.g. on additional discussion lists) as needed for publicity purposes. I think it is largely recognized that PIUG is not responsible for the release of meeting information as it is submitted to us by outside organizations. Most participants, therefore, have taken great care not to submit particularly sensitive technical or business information.
All activities surrounding the annual meeting or regional meetings are monitored and pre-approved by the PIUG Program Committees. The annual conference program committee comprises: PIUG Chair (also Chair of the Program Committee), Immediate Past Chair, Treasurer and Vice Chair. The regional workshop program committee(s) comprise select members as determined by the Regional Workshop Chair working in conjunction with one or more members of the PIUG Board of Directors.
Speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, vendor events, training sessions, and workshops are invited or selected at the sole discretion of the PIUG Program Committee. Submission of an abstract (or lack thereof) by a certain deadline does not guarantee inclusion (or exclusion) of the talk from the program. We have reserved the right to arrange and/or change the schedule and agenda at the sole discretion of the Program Committee, while operating under the general principles as outlined above.
The PIUG Program Committee is very often asked to pre-approve and is very often notified of any workshops, training sessions, product showcases, special displays, group meetings with PIUG members (including dinners), or other events taking place during or held in conjunction with PIUG meetings in order to ensure no scheduling conflicts and in order to ensure compliance with the principles as outlined above.
The activities of the Program Committees include, but are not limited to:
At the discretion of and under the leadership of the Program Committee, volunteers are recruited and selected to handle the following planning activities and possibly others, as needed: Registration, Travel Information, Publicity, Exhibits, Menus, Entertainment, Audiovisual, Meeting Evaluation, and Session Chairs.
The meetings are made possible only due to the cooperation and efforts of all of the people involved, both in the planning process and in the programming process. I encourage anyone who would like to be more involved in our meetings to contact the Program Committee directly. This includes small companies, new patent information providers, and other individuals who have a lot to say that is educational and relevant to the patent information user community.
PIUG has recently received (non-vendor) corporate donations in support of our meetings.
These donations can gradually build up and allow us to further develop and maintain a
healthy balance between donations from the information industry as well as from the patent
information user corporate community. The contributions can also greatly strengthen
our financial position over the coming years. By increasing our corporate support, PIUG
will be able to further improve the services available to members and better establish a
strong financial base for future activities and educational meetings.
Please do what you can to promote PIUG within your organization. Each small effort can
make a big difference. Below please find some tips that you can use to help ensure the
continuing growth of such donations!
The information community suffered a great loss when Michael P. O’Hara passed away on March 5, 2002.
His expertise in the online information area with special emphasis on chemical and patent information retrieval systems was internationally recognized. He provided unique experience in chemical structure information systems, since he was actively involved in the introduction of three of the major chemical structure search systems: CAS ONLINE, Generic DARC and Markush DARC.
Mike, born in 1940 in Hamilton, Ohio, received a B.A. degree in Chemistry and an M.Sc. degree from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. While working as a graduate student at Ohio State University, he started his professional career in chemical information as an editor in the organic index editing department at Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), first as a summer student in 1967, and then on a permanent basis. At CAS, he eventually became involved in user training and system development. He was an active member of a team, which was responsible for the development and introduction of CAS ONLINE.
In 1981, he joined the newly formed Questel, Inc., and, in his capacity as vice-president, was responsible for marketing, training, and customer support of the DARC system in the U.S.
In 1991, he established his own consulting firm, O’Hara Consulting, Inc., in Washington, D.C., renamed in 1999 to Millennium Information Services, specializing in technical information requirements for chemical and pharmaceutical firms and in providing structure access to the world’s chemical patents. It is heart breaking to see his advertisement in the most recent, spring 2002, issue of the CHEMICAL INFORMATION BULLETIN. Mike was the U.S. representative for INPI (Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle) and provided North American support and training for MMS (Merged Markush Service) database.
Mike was an active member of leading professional organizations such as the American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Chemical Information (CINF) and Patent Information Users Group (PIUG), and over the years, he held important positions in both organizations and contributed enormously to their development and efficient operation.
Mike was a true friend to many of us and will be sorely missed.
W. Val Metanomski
Archivist/Historian
ACS Division of Chemical Information
Welcome to the Vendors’ Corner, a new column in the PIUG Newsletter that will give you the latest news from the database producers, online hosts, and Internet patent resources that serve the patent information community.
First, let me refer readers to the March 2002 issue of Searcher Magazine. The “Better Mousetrap” column in that issue is my annual “That was the year that was” (TWTYTW) article, a summary of changes in patent information resources over 2001. Also, for an article that covers changes in 2001 focusing on patent offices, patent owners, patent legal, and IP, check out Derwent’s “Patent Focus” on their IP Matters Web site (http://www.derwent.com/ipmatters).
This issue’s column will cover changes since the end of 2001. I will essentially summarize updates that the vendors have sent me for the column, omitting anything I already covered in TWTYTW and translating from Press Release-ese when necessary.
So, here we go!
CAS recently announced the addition of patents from Italy and Luxembourg to the CA databases. Italian patents go back through 1999; Luxembourg patents, through 2000. CA now covers patents from 35 patenting authorities, including the EPO and WIPO. For a full list of country coverage, go to http://www.cas.org/EO/country.html.
CAS has increased the iteration and answer limits for a substructure search in the CAS Registry file. Online Registry searches can now go through 60,000 iterations and generate 60,000 answers; batch searches, 150,000 iterations and answers. The same limits apply to subset and range searches.
Dialog recently announced a patent-related improvement to SourceOne, their document delivery service, which they re-launched last September. You can now order up to 50 patent documents at a time from 38 countries and receive PDF images of the patents (complete with drawings and chemical structures) via e-mail. Dialog also restored the “Review Order” command.
Questel-Orbit has re-named some of its country-specific databases so that the names reflect standardized WIPO country codes. For instance, PCTPAT becomes WOPAT, CTMARK becomes EMMARK, DMARK becomes DEMARK, UKMARK becomes GBMARK. SDIs on these databases will be shifted automatically to the new database names; and the old names will remain available as synonyms for a while.
Questel-Orbit plans to teach the basics of patent searching to patent lawyers and agents in an accredited Continuing Legal Education (CLE) course. They will offer the course within a few months in California, New York, and Massachusetts. Program participants will earn 4.5 credit hours.
I don’t plan to editorialize much in this column, but let me say here that I am very glad to see a traditional online host reach out to a potential new group of patent information users, and I hope to see the trend continue, not just for CLE, but for future lawyers and patent searchers in school. STN and Dialog have a long history of providing low-cost access to and training in their host systems and selected databases at the college level, to chemistry students, library school students, and so on; but training in the patent databases has been lacking in colleges up till now. (Hint to Derwent: You need to provide student access to your database at super-low costs, if you hope to have trained searchers using it when the current group retires. Let’s talk about this!)
As I mentioned in TWTYTW, IFI/CLAIMS is producing an indexing vocabulary for U.S. business method patents in U.S. patent class 705. This indexing is now available within the CLAIMS files on Dialog (e.g. file 340) for patents from January 2000 onward; indexing for pre-2000 records will be added as the IFI staff produces it. Users can search terms in this new vocabulary with the prefix BI=. The indexing will eventually go into IFI/CLAIMS files on the other hosts. For more information, call or e-mail Dave VonGlahn of Aspen at 212-597-0329 (dvonglahn@aspenpubl.com).
As promised in TWTYTW, IFI/CLAIMS has now added U.S. pre-grant patent publications to the CLAIMS files on all the online hosts. The PGP records include most of the same fields as the CLAIMS granted patent records, including IFI-standardized assignee names, IFI chemical indexing, chemical structure notations, and title expansions. Because granted patents come out on Tuesdays and PGPs on Thursdays, IFI/CLAIMS now updates its patent databases twice weekly. Users can choose twice-weekly, weekly, or monthly alerting searches.
During 2001 (but I omitted mentioning it in TWTYTW) Delphion added U.S. pre-grant
publications to its Web site. The records are separate from corresponding granted patent
records but contain links to them, as well as to other related patents and publications
(divisionals, CIPs, etc.).
In January Delphion added saved-search and alert capabilities to its mounting of the
Derwent World Patents Index. Users can now save search strategies that they may want to
repeat and set up automatic updates of the Derwent database. Delphion also added EPI
Manual Codes to the Derwent database. These codes, which Derwent made available online to
non-subscribers a few years ago, are searchable on Delphion at the “standard”
rate of $8 per search statement.
Delphion also announced in January that PATOLIS, a JAPIO spin-off, will distribute Delphion products in Japan via PATOLIS-web. For more information on Delphion matters, visit their Web site (www.delphion.com) or call or e-mail Rich Dobinski (630-799-0630; Rich_Dobinski/Delphion%DELPHION@delphion.com.
MicroPatent now offers patent and trademark file histories. Their D.C. staff fills orders at the USPTO, and charges appear on customers’ MicroPatent invoices.
MicroPatent is getting into the patent analysis business. They have created a new workspace environment within PatSearch FullText called “Worksheets.” In this space customers can import up to 20,000 search result patent records and group them by families, then sort, graph, and analyze the families in a variety of ways. For more details, see their Web site at http://www.micropat.com/0/worksheets.html.
Minesoft, the British-based patent company that currently provides a document delivery service in cooperation with Questel-Orbit, recently announced a new European patent monitoring service called “EP Tracker.” Subscribers can monitor the progress of patent applications of interest through the European Patent Registry Online. The service checks the EPO Server once a week for changes in the patents being monitored and e-mails documents with any changes to the subscriber. For more details, including price information, go to http://www.eptracker.com.
BizInt (Business Intelligence) recently announced BizInt Smart Charts for Patents Version 2.3. Smart Charts for Patents allows users to create tabular reports using data imported from various online patent databases. In the new version, users can create combined reports from Chemical Abstracts, DWPI, IFI/CLAIMS, and other databases from Dialog, Questel-Orbit, and STN. For more details, to download the BizInt software, or to download a free trial version of the new Smart Charts for Patents, go to the BizInt Web site at http://www.bizcharts.com.
Nancy Lambert
Senior Information Analyst
ChevronTexaco Services Company
Since May 2001, Australians have had a new IP right, the Australian Innovation Patent. The Australian Innovation Patent replaces the Petty Patent system with a few changes.
So what is an “Innovation Patent”?
Innovation Patents are intended to provide intellectual property rights for those incremental and lower level inventions that would not qualify for protection under a standard patent.
An Innovation Patent can only have up to five claims and has a maximum term of eight years. In addition to these, an Innovation Patent must still be new, useful and a manner of manufacture. One of the key features of the Innovation Patent system is that it must have an innovative, rather than an inventive, step. An innovative step has two parts:
Once an application is filed, the application undergoes a ‘formalities’ check and will usually proceed to grant within a month. There is no substantive examination before grant. At this stage the patentee has no enforceable rights. It is only after examination, after which a patent is certified, that rights become enforceable.
One of the more publicised Innovation Patents has been John Keogh’s “circular transportation device,” better known as the “wheel” patent. In fact, it was awarded an Ig Nobel award for Technology in 2001; see http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html.
Claim 1 reads:
“A transportation facilitation device including:
a circular rim;
a bearing in which a hollow cylindrical member is rotatable about a rod situated within
the hollow cylindrical member; and
a series of connecting members connecting the circular rim with the hollow cylindrical
member to maintain the circular rim and the hollow cylindrical member in substantially
fixed relation; wherein
the rod is positioned on an axis perpendicular to the plane of the circular rim, and
substantially central of the circular rim.”
Although the Innovation Patent was revoked shortly after grant, it has created a significant amount of comment and interest in relation to the Innovation Patent system. A copy of the “wheel” Innovation Patent is available at http://www.ipmenu.com/archive/aui_2001100012.pdf.
So what does the Australian Innovation Patent mean to the IP community?
Apart from the fact that the Innovation Patent is an alternative form of patent protection in Australia, it also means that publication of some new ideas is almost instantaneous. This could have an impact on novelty or inventive step in some instances. Some applicants are also seeking the marketing advantage of having a “patented” product, whilst others are using it as a way to ‘fast track’ a divisional from a standard application, allowing a granted Innovation Patent (the divisional) to be examined and made enforceable. This would assist patentees to bring infringement action far quicker.
At present, there are three ways of obtaining information on Innovation Patents: the Official Journal, CD-ROM, and the Innovation Patent Index. The Official Journal and CD-ROM are only available by annual subscription. The Australian Innovation Patent Index is a free web-based service provided by IP Organisers for those that do not have access to the journals or CD-ROMs. The Australian Innovation Patent Index can be found at www.iporganisers.com.au/innovation.htm.
The Australian Innovation Patent Index is updated weekly and contains information on all published Innovation Patents. The Index is fully text searchable over the entire range of fields including title, IPC, applicant and inventor. At present the Index contains over 600 records, with 20-30 new publications each week.
118 persons attended the PIUG Northeast Workshop on October 16, 2001, at ExxonMobil, Clinton, NJ. The workshop included topics relating to the retrieval and presentation of patent information in the fields of chemistry, biology, trends in research, and the law. Representatives from Rohm and Haas included Kerryn Brandt, Ken Koubek, and Cathy Misner, who is compiling this review document with input from Kerryn and Ken.
The Complete Markush Structure Search: Mission Impossible…? (Robert Austin, STN FIZ Karlsruhe): Robert Austin presented a detailed method for conducting a thorough (graphics-based) patent prior art search for a given chemical, class of chemicals or chemical substructure. Mr. Austin emphasized that for a comprehensive search, it is necessary to search more than one database, and the process often requires consulting more than one online information vendor. Mr. Austin provided a background for the process of Markush searching, and he detailed a strategy for carrying out a comprehensive search across multiple vendors and databases. Candidate databases were compared for physical size, features, numbers of structures, and date coverage. The method involved an eight-step procedure, which is facilitated by using STN Express®, the software communications, structure drawing, and data manipulation tool available from the (Chemical Abstracts Service) STN vendor. Mr. Austin used a common pharmaceutical, diazepam, as the subject compound. STN Express® software is capable of generating database specific chemical coding for searching chemical structures, which speeds the search process. New STN Express® features streamline post processing of online session transcripts; they allow search strings to be uploaded to STN databases as automatically generated queries. Live full text links in the reports now provide direct access to primary documents via the ChemPort® Connection.
Mr. Austin provided a recipe for a successful search and identified possible pitfalls. In a message to the PIUG-L mailing list on November 5, 2001, he said, “For those of you who did not attend this meeting: my material gives a personal perspective on bringing MMS, CAS MARPAT/REGISTRY and Derwent WPI Chemical Fragmentation Code search results together into a single comprehensive unified set on STN. The paper [an extensive handout of the material covered in the presentation; available at http://www.stn-international.de/training_center/chemistry/piug1.pdf ] focuses on a series of search examples, comparing results retrieved by each database producer.”
Vendor Roast (moderated by Elyse Turner, Merck & Co., Inc): The panel included representatives from the Chemical Abstracts Service, Dialog, Questel*Orbit, Derwent Information, Paterra Inc, INPI, MicroPatent, Aurigin Systems, BizInt Solutions, BountyQuest, Delphion, IFI CLAIMS® . A primary discussion topic was the recently introduced coverage of US patent applications and how various vendors treat these applications. This part of the discussion was continued from the 2000 Northeast Regional Meeting. Many questions concerned a recent PIUG discussion thread concerning uncovering of gaps and errors in US patent coverage. Questioners wanted to know if, or how, the source of corrupt data involved the Vendors. Vendors of data-mining and data-manipulation tools were asked about their expanded choices of output via new electronic formats. Additional questions related to one of the following categories:
Currency: The panel were asked to discuss a perceived increasing lag in adding new patent (applications) to their products. The number one service required from vendors is not to fall behind on loading patent data into their respective products.
Country Coverage: Who is covering Asian patenting authorities, and what is the quality and substance of the abstracts from these countries? A need was expressed for better abstracts for patents from these authorities. What is the availability of full text of PCT applications from the various online vendors? Is full text from other countries available only via the internet (Canada, Australia, UK)? What is the patent coverage of the Asia/Pacific rim countries in patent databases, and what information is available from the Middle East? Some responses from the vendors included:
Pricing Models – Dialog announced DialUnits will disappear in January, 2002; the new pricing model will allow customers to toggle between DialUnit type charges or time unit charges.
Questel*Orbit announced fixed pricing options; evolving Qpat into QPlusPat, including unlimited document ordering for electronic delivery; per service pricing and open access licenses were discussed. The Questel*Orbit format for displaying ECLA Codes, which are available in PlusPat, is “Plus EC”.
New Tools - Vendors were queried about text manipulation tools; importing text from a full text database to be able to create charts or reports and text specific, not field specific hit terms.
Ron Kaminecki, Senior Intellectual Property Consultant, Dialog, began the presentation by defining the Topic terms, explaining why licensing data is harder to locate (essentially a lease) than reassignment data (ownership). There are database specific indexing terms, like PROMT’s EC (event codes) for licensing and business agreements or Press Releases (EN terms), and the Business and Industry Database’s controlled term vocabulary (CT= patent license) for locating licensing opportunities (available from either government or commercial sources). Some companies, like MicroPatent, gather and sell this information for a fee. Licensing information, which is easier to locate than patent reassignment information, can be obtained by including D&B coding and PROMT event codes.
Mr. Kaminecki stressed examining a company’s motives for the release of the
licensing information.
Proximity search operators (here Ron stressed directionality of the operator) for full
text databases are important tools for improving relevant retrieval. Financial data are
sometimes included in the text. Much background is located in the patent databases.
Trademark owners’ information may come from Trademark database sources.
The final section of the presentation dealt with reassignment information: which databases cover reassignments; which patents get reassigned and to whom; databases that identify government patent applications (some published prior to 2001) which may be available for licensing (NTIS). The session concluded with a slide identifying 14 Dialog databases which serve as valuable sources of licensing information.
Alan Engel, President of Paterra, Inc., presented an explanation of the various types of electronic patent document delivery formats currently available, or soon to be available, for delivering patent documents over the Internet. Formats discussed included (in order of increasing complexity) TIFF, PDF, RTF, SGML, HML, and XML. Alan explained the structure behind each format, the difficulty (and cost) of producing information in a particular format, and the pros and cons of employing each format (from the viewpoint of the producer/programmer and of the end user). A representative example is HTML, whose major advantage is that it is supported across many computer platforms. An identification of the emerging formats, XML, with its easily read and understood text files and self contained documents, and some predictions of which formats will continue to maintain their popularity, concluded the presentation.
The session on Tools and Tips was moderated by Marty Goffman, Principal Consultant, Martin Goffman Associates. Panel members made presentations concentrating on the output of a search, particularly the summary report presented to the client. Panel members stressed a need to employ multiple software tools to produce meaningful and professional-looking reports.
Ken Allison, Information Consultant, Robert Wood Johnson Pharmaceutical Research, Raritan, NJ, focused on a pharmaceutical structure novelty search and presented a sample format for the results. He identified some issues which need to be addressed in constructing the final report, including its legally “discoverable” aspects. Ken opened several of his discussion topics for general discussion. Other concerns to be addressed include the depth of retrieval the search specialist should include in creating the report, and the use of neutral language in constructing the report (no “weasel words”). Questions of the visualization of the results, and the format of the strategy were addressed. For example, how does one handle overly broad disclosures (in structures)? Who is responsible for providing full text documents, the searcher or the client? Mr. Allison presented a sample structure / novelty search report, and highlighted the components required for useful output, and their utility in explaining the search processes involved, as well in clarifying the results. Good report construction will facilitate easy updates to the search by subsequent information professionals. Mr. Allison re-emphasized the lack of editorializing, stressing a narrative presentation of results and / or a summary sheet.
Kerry Stanley, Senior Application Specialist with the Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, added to the discussion by presenting a recipe for producing an Excel pivot table report from a (delimited) STN search. The exercise highlighted the new, and existing, report generating features of STN Express®, version 6.0c. Kerry showed how the predefined and customized reports clarify, organize and clean up the data. STN Express® v6.0c allows for tabular displays of data, export to Excel spread sheets, and graphical presentation of some of the data. Suggestions for displays which add value included: indexes of patent assignee, patent numbers and subject terms (available only from files with subject term indexes).
Patricia Dedert, Senior Research Associate, ExxonMobil, concluded the panel’s presentation on output formats with a sample report created using a combination of commercially available post-processing software products, including KEDIT, STN Express® and BizInt Smart Charts. Ms. Dedert’s report format case study required that the results of a search obtained from multiple databases be merged into one report. A strategy employing International Patent Classification codes, trade names and specific compound terminology was used to generate the raw data. Meaningful results are generated by making a careful selection of the display format at the time of downloading the results from each database, by tagging the results for easier separation of data fields, and by constructing macros for automating data manipulation. Some macros remove duplicate information, while other macro scripts will add explanations of the IPC codes present in the answer sets. Graphics are an important value-added feature. The final report takes advantage of MS Office post processing features, which enable the creation of a Table of Contents for the results, and Excel spreadsheets for further data handlling. The sample product, posted as a Web page or e-mailed to the client, included a summary table, a table of contents, as well as the standard patent abstracts.
This session was presented by Adrienne Shanler, a patent information specialist with American Home Products, Pearl River, NY. The presentation was a reconstruction of previous work, and it compared the advances in comprehensiveness of searching oligopeptide sequences in 2001 to its inadequacies just 10 years ago.
Adrienne presented an overview of the two sources of sequence information, the CAS Registry File and DGENE; she compared their coverage, record numbers, content, update frequency, and special features (like the support of structures). Structure searches were conducted in the Registry file, while sequence patterns were entered into the DGENE database. The advances in the sequence search capabilities in online databases in the last few years have eliminated the need for some of the more time consuming search strategies, and this speeds the process for some of the simpler searches.
Mary Ellen Mogee of Mogee Research and Analysis, Reston, VA, presented the results of a
statistical analysis of patent data, using international patenting of human gene sequences
as a working example. Ms. Mogee gave attendees a quick history of the human genome project
and influences which have led to the increasing numbers of patents in the field. A
combination of (settlement of) legal challenges and evolving international government
policy (placing the data in the public domain) have had a positive effect on the number of
companies entering the gene sequence patenting field.
Properly constructed visual and graphical representations of the data (top patent issuing
countries, assignees, citing activities) enable the estimation of research trends in the
area.
Scott Lawrence of Bristol-Myers Squibb made the final presentation of the day, a brief description of a stand-alone comprehensive knowledge management system for end-users, in the form of a database of 6,000 preset search queries. These queries provide answers to the most common end-user search requests, freeing the information retrieval staff for more complex search activities. A central web portal interface, dubbed SciLit, allows for question-oriented activities, in contrast to having the client scroll through endless lists of available resources. Work-group-specific web pages are developed to support the typical information needs of the various Corporate discovery research programs. The foundation for the SciLit architecture is a customized Dialog Toolkit® product. The system is very responsive, often presenting results to the client in near real-time.
Poster sessions, held concurrently with the vendor demonstrations and afternoon sessions, included:
1. “Tips for Searching Business Method Patent Applications in Full-Text Dialog Databases”, presented by Aleksandr Belinski, Independent Information Consultant.
Mr. Belinski presented special techniques he developed for searching concepts which consist of common terms which occur frequently in full text sources. These included combinations of proximity operators and restricting broader term retrieval by combining with narrower terms.
2. “Tumor Necrosis Factor, A Proprietary and Competitive Evaluation Using Roundtrip Analytics”, presented by Ric Snead, IP Specialist with Aurigin Systems.
Aurigin’s text analysis tool, Aureka® Themescape®, evaluates all documents in a group and generates a visual topographic map that helps to give further understanding of how the documents are related. The mountain peaks represent concentrations of shared text or themes, while the valleys show less frequently published ideas. The tool is interactive, allowing users to see the supporting terms and read and print the underlying documents within the context of the map. In addition, maps can be further processed using stop words to better define regions and de-emphasize irrelevancy. For the poster, Themescape® was used to analyze all the U.S., European and WIPO patents and published patent applications found to claim TNF antagonists. The relationships shown include: defining dominant patent holders and key inventors; determining company research focus, i.e. antibody, antibody fragment, soluble receptor or small molecule; tracking research trends and locating valued patents. Themescape® is useful in evaluating R & D directions, supporting licensing decisions and determining relative patent portfolio strengths.
The afternoon concluded with an ice cream social, which provided a final opportunity for networking with fellow attendees and with vendors to explore their products and services. As usual, this was a day well spent, and the handouts and presentations provided some useful suggestions for data manipulation and much food for thought.
Report submitted by Catherine (Lyons) Misner, Knowledge Center, Rohm and Haas Corporation, Spring House, PA.
Below are the results of the evaluations of the PIUG Northeast Meeting. 34 responses were received from the 100+ attendees. All numerical scores are on a one to five scale, with five being the “high” score.
MIX - rating = 4.2
Three people thought the vendor roast was too long. One thought the tips and tricks session too long. Three suggested the talks were too heavy/long. Some of the things people would like to see more of include more training and “how-to” sessions, including more tips and tricks.
Comments on the mix were generally positive.
As far as what the attendees were looking for in the meeting, comments ranged from “current awareness of trends and capabilities” to “learn techniques and strategies, meet other searchers”. When asked if the meeting met their expectations, the rating was 3.9. When asked to rate the following as reasons for attending, the following were given:
Networking/socialization - rating = 3.7
Learning/keeping up-to-date - rating = 4.3
The top two speakers were:
Ron Kaminecki of Dialog - rating = 4.1
Ron received comments such as “very interesting! Good start to the afternoon”
Scott Lawrence of Bristol-Myers Squibb - rating = 4.0
Comments such as “nice overview of the impact of the Dialog Toolkit”.
The following recommendations were made:
Nine attendees suggested expanding the poster session
Three suggested eliminating it.
Twelve found it “useful”
Four did not find it “useful”
Some comments pointed to a need for more handouts.
By and large, the comments on the hall, food, location, directions, and parking were extremely positive; with the exception that a few attendees suggested a venue not as far west. Also suggested was the use in the future of a hotel or conference center in a location more accessible to public transportation. These issues are being investigated, though of course we are very grateful to Exxon Mobil (particularly Dr. Sandra Unger) for the use of their excellent facilities.
Comments were generally quite positive about the premeeting arrangements including the website, registration form, and directions. The comments on the post-meeting ice-cream social were generally good, but not raving.
When asked if they would attend next year, the following responses were given:
27 Yes
0 No
3 If possible, generally depending on budgets.
2 Depends on program
Comments ranged from “always pick up something/good networking”, to
“keep more face-to-face contact”, to “useful, good to meet
colleagues”.
When asked what one thing they would improve, the attendees gave a wide variety of useful
suggestions, including toning down the vendor roast, to “some problems hearing”,
to “tips section too packed”, among various other comments. When asked what one
thing they most appreciated, comments were made approving of the mix, the Markush paper,
the vendor roast, the talks, adherence to schedule, overall quality, and numerous other
positive comments.
Randall Ward
PIUG NE Meeting Steering Committee member
Novartis Pharmaceuticals
On behalf of the PIUG Northeast Workshop Planning Committee, I would like to extend a big Thank You to all of those who volunteered and participated in the workshop. The event was very successful, with 103 patent information professionals in attendance. The feedback we’ve received on the Workshop has been very positive, and our members found it to be a very helpful day.
I would like to thank our sponsors for their generous support, the wonderful displays and especially the great giveaways.
• Chemical Abstracts Service
• Dialog
• MicroPatent
• TPR International
Bronze Sponsors: BizInt, Derwent, IFI/Aspen Publishing; Factiva, Delphion, Questel-Orbit, Paterra
I would like to thank the vendors who sat on the vendor roast for being so gracious
with our questions.
• Aurigin Systems, Inc. - Ric Snead - IP Specialist
• BizInt Solutions - Bertha Adamson - Product Support Manager
• BountyQuest Corporation - Charles Cella - CEO and Founder
• Chemical Abstracts Service - Kerry Stanley - Applications Specialist
• Derwent Information - Don Walter - Online Service Manager
• Dialog - Ron Kaminecki - Senior Intellectual Property Consultant
• IFI CLAIMS® Patent Services - Jim Brown - Sr. Technical Representative
• MicroPatent - Taka Nakashima - Director of Sales, Asia & the Americas
• Millennium Information Services - Michael P. O’Hara - President
• Paterra Inc. - Alan Engel - President
• Questel*Orbit - Lindley McGrew - Patent Product Manager
I would like to thank our speakers for such informative talks and poster sessions.
• Robert Austin, Regional Sales Manager USA, FIZ Karlsruhe
• Ron Kaminecki, Senior Intellectual Property Consultant, Dialog - A Thomson Company
• Alan Engel, President, Paterra, Inc.
• Adrienne Shanler, Patent Information Scientist, American Home Products Corp.
• Mary Ellen Mogee, Ph.D., President, Mogee Research & Analysis LLC
• Isia Bursuker, Sr. Patent Analyst, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
• Scott Lawrence, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
• Aleksandr Belinskiy, Librarian/Technical Information Specialist, NIST
• Ric Snead, IP Specialist, Aurigin Systems, Inc.
• Martin Goffman, Principal Consultant, Martin Goffman Associates
• Ken Allison, Information Consultant, R. W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research
Institute
• Pat Dedert, Senior Research Associate, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co.
• Kerry G. Stanley, Sr. Application Specialist, Chemical Abstracts Service
I would like to thank all of those who volunteered to make this meeting such a great success.
Andy Berks did an amazing job of fundraising, raising an unprecedented $8,100 using a new strategy he designed. He raised funds from eleven companies, including four Gold Sponsors and seven Bronze Sponsors. He prepared the sponsor web page and assisted the sponsors with setting up their displays at the meeting.
Barbara Burg arranged and conducted all of the affairs of registration for the meeting. She prepared the registration form for the meeting. She prepared a database template for tracking registrations. She prepared confirmation materials to send to registrants. She coordinated with Jenny Xanthos to pre-register 118 people for the meeting. She worked with Tom Wilhelm to register those 118 people at the meeting. She also convinced a number of people to join PIUG.
Marty Goffman took care of all of the details for the Tips & Tricks session. This session was very well received, even if no one answered Ken’s questions. And I liked it too. The panelists were well prepared and he kept them on topic and on time. I hope we can do a similar panel on a different topic next year.
Patti Otani put together a professional-looking meeting booklet, modeled on the booklet for the PIUG Annual Conference, but tailored for the special needs of our meeting. She kept on top of all of the details that were needed to ensure that nothing was missed.
Adrienne Shanler was a focal point of the Planning Committee, providing help and ideas from having coordinated this meeting for so many years. Her many insights into problems and pitfalls from the past were very helpful to make the meeting run smoothly.
Sandra Unger did an excellent job of coordinating all of the tasks necessary to provide a professional and smooth running meeting. Not only did Sandra arrange meeting space, breaks, meals and the ice cream social, she also coordinated the materials necessary for the slide presentations for all of the talks. She also produced all of the signs and coordinated their placment. I really appreciate that she coordinated people on site (Dan Hendriksen, Tom Wilhelm, Zhifu Shu) to help with the vendor displays and registration. Having someone who knows the ropes while not having to lean on Sandra the whole time was invaluable.
Don Walter helped attendees with travel arrangements before, during and after the meeting. He also transported some people in his own car. I was particularly pleased when I was able to link Janice Kelland, the PIUG Newsletter Editor, up with him to help her with travel arrangements.
Randall Ward put together a professional quality evaluation form and evaluation review. This form is very valuable in determining what was and was not successful at the meeting. Randall cheerfully collected the forms at the meeting. He quickly performed a review and evaluation. He provided the results in a very timely fashion.
Jenny Xanthos kept on top of the registration and provided regular updates. In her absence, she arranged for someone to handle the incoming registrations.
I would like to extend a special thank you to Melissa Dicker for taking the time to discuss with me extensively about her experiences with the West Coast Workshop. Among others, I specifically incorporated two of her ideas into this workshop: gifts for the speakers and a social gathering after the meeting.
I would like to thank the rest of the 103 people for attending the meeting and for all of the wonderful comments I received during and after the meeting. Your feedback is essential to improve future meetings.
In October 2001, the annual EPIDOS meeting made its first visit to the United Kingdom. For some years now, the UK Patent Office has been based in South Wales, with only a small sub-office in London. As a result, the meeting was held in the capital of Wales, Cardiff. The city has undergone an extensive programme of urban regeneration in the last 10-15 years, and features brand-new conference, sporting and leisure facilities. Sadly, one of the other things for which Cardiff is famous – the rain – also featured in abundance during the week, but hopefully this did not prove too much of a handicap.
This year, I was asked by the EPO to act as a formal rapporteur at the closing plenary session. In Cardiff, the Patinnova conference sponsored by the European Commission and the EPO’s EPIDOS conference were once again running in parallel, as in Greece two years ago. It was felt that delegates would benefit for hearing a summary of the sessions which they had been unable to attend, in order to get an overall picture of the events. The Patinnova conference focusses on legal affairs and mainly draws an audience of attorneys and policy-makers.
From the information point of view, I felt that the 2001 conference represented a period of consolidation. There were no grand announcements of new products or services, but instead a realisation that a lot of work was going on behind the scenes to improve existing products and pave the way for enhancements in future years.
I felt that there were four discernible themes during the two days of the conference, which can be summarised as:
The first aspect of infrastructure relates to the basic way of doing business (if you like, the ‘business methods’) surrounding the patent system. During the plenary session, we heard from Mr. Rhodri Morgan (First Minister of the devolved Welsh Assembly) about how Wales as an industrial region has had to re-invent itself over the years, and gained an appreciation of the need for intellectual property rights during that process. The second outside speaker was Ms. Mandy Haberman, a well-known private inventor, who touched on a number of important issues concerning how small inventors and SME’s (small and medium-sized enterprises) are served by the existing patent regime, especially the litigation aspects. Mrs. Meyers of the EPO indicated that the EPIDOS organisation will be conducting a major survey of the information needs of European businesses during the coming year. President Kober referred to the reform of the European Patent Convention and Mr. William Guy from WIPO mentioned reform of the PCT and of the IPC. All of these issues are foundational to the effective use of the patent information system; they may not be very exciting in themselves, but as due attention is paid to these issues, they will hopefully contribute to a more effective overall system.
The second aspect of infrastructure related more to technical standards in the preparation of our information tools. Mr. Guy referred to WIPO’s work in developing standards for Global IPDL and e-filing, Mr. Kiesbauer (EPO) informed us of the ongoing work to move CD products to DVD, Mr. Pantoglou and Mr. Paris (EPO) spoke of new data capture systems, technical platforms and dataflow and quality control processes for INPADOC. Mr. Day from The Hague branch of the EPO indicated that the major work on esp@cenet during the forthcoming year will be an internal software re-write. Technical aspects are clearly an ongoing issue for users, as contributors to one of the technical Workshops specifically requested action on enhancing bandwidth to the EPO website.
In the area of interfaces, MIMOSA version 4.15 will bring in some new features. Once again, members of an earlier technical workshop had pre-empted this with a request for development of a browser-based access method for some of the CD-ROM products. Mr. Dickinson (EPO) indicated that a great deal of work will be going on in the next year in order to establish a better model of the desired functionality and ‘image’ of the main EPO website; this was backed up by a request for some guidelines for the ‘new visitor’ to the website (workshop B). Ms. Schellner gave a very interesting talk about the various new English-language access tools to more Japanese information (Attendees at workshop C also requested improved applicant search means in the Patolis system). Whilst most of the forthcoming esp@cenet work will be invisible to the user, Mr. Day also told us of plans to revise the interfaces on esp@cenet, including a system for embedded drawings and providing rapid access to figure pages through mosaic images. Workshop attendees submitted requests for a ‘guided search’ mode (workshop F) and the ability to use the ‘OR’ operator between fields (workshop H).
There are many ways in which the ease of integration (or lack of it) can prove a decisive factor in the adoption of an information tool. I could sympathise with the quote from Peter Kallas of BASF (representing the PDG), who said that, “A stand-alone solution is not a solution - it is a problem.” Conversely, it is easy to fall into the trap of over-integration, by trying to create a ‘one-stop information shop,’ but instead only forming a jumble of unrelated products linked by the lowest common denominator, rather than a genuine synergistic solution which maintains the unique benefits of each component. In this context, it was good to see some examples of genuine integration which help the user to get the maximum benefit from the information tools available. Mr. Kiesbauer described the introduction of hyperlinks from the CD products to esp@cenet, and Mr. Schwander (EPO liaison officer to the Commission) illustrated the use of the ECLA codes listings within esp@cenet. Mr. Ebner described the introduction of links from the EPO Register to corresponding EPO Board of Appeal decisions on the website; this was a partial fulfilment of a request for better links between documents and legal material from workshop B. Finally, it was noted that the ongoing work on the epoline project is ‘closing the loop,’ making links between esp@cenet, the Register, file inspection (including citations) and back to esp@cenet. The Register-to-file inspection link was particularly asked for by workshop G.
The question of information content brings with it the question of relations between the EPO (and other intellectual property offices) with the commercial patent information sector. Both Mrs. Meyers and Dr. Kallas touched on the crucial role of the ‘value added’ supplier, and Dr. Kallas also reiterated some earlier remarks from Ursula Schoch-Grübler of BASF, to the effect that “more is not necessarily better.” We do not want to swamp – and ultimately deter – users in our haste to provide access to large volumes of information. Nonetheless, there are still new products entering, if not the marketplace, at least the horizon of the prospective user. One example was the announcement about forthcoming release of the full text of several years’ worth of PCT pamphlets via the WIPO website (Mr. Guy). Mr. Kiesbauer informed us of the resumption, and partial remodelling, of the GlobalPat disk-based product. As regards INPADOC, we heard of additional coverage for Taiwan, with Tajikistan in the pipeline, and a range of new legal status data flowing from the initiative to obtain details on PCT national phase entry. (Sadly, the impact of some of Mr. Pantoglou’s colour-coded slides was lost on me, as he had chosen the specific red-green combination which 8% of the male population cannot distinguish). On the website, more legal information in the form of a full back-file of EPO Board of Appeal Decisions from 1978 has been loaded. Perhaps the most substantial tranche of new data emerged from the Japanese Patent Office, who now enable class-based searching back to 1914, and more legal status data from the Patolis-e service (Ms. Schellner). Nonetheless, the demand for more detailed Japanese information continues, with requests for patent family data based on Japanese utility model cases, and for additional legal status (workshops C and A). Finally, several of the EPO member states have plans to load larger national (Level 1) datasets on esp@cenet, and work is well under way on trials for the new EPO candidate countries (Mr. Day).
The final part of this topic relates to what I might call ‘information about information’. It is evident that the working information specialist needs continual backup from the producer on questions of database content. In particular, it is important to be able to tell the difference between “null information” (fields for which the absence of data has a specific significance) and missing information (fields which would normally be populated but which are empty due to data transmission failure). Examples would include informing users when post-grant lapse data is not available (workshop D), or ensuring that information providers giving prompt warning about data delays or gaps (workshop D, workshop H). In many cases, we do not yet have adequate baseline information on what can be classed as ‘normal’ timeliness for legal status events (workshop D). Generally, there was a renewed call for proactive support from providers on coverage issues for their information products (workshop E). On the question of communication, it was worthwhile to highlight the need which the “information” community has for “legal” information. This might have come as a surprise to some of the attendees of the Patinnova meeting, whose constituency is traditionally from the attorney community, and who might not appreciate that their activities have a profound bearing upon the work of searchers. As examples, I cited two Decisions of the Administrative Council of the EPO. The first was that of 5 Dec 1996 amending Article 79(2) EPC, which had an immediate impact on the usefulness of designated states data. The second more recent one was the Decision of 28 June 2001 amending Rule 107, which will make itself felt in the (newly collected) PCT transfer data over the next 2 years.
The EPIDOS Annual Conference is an occasion when we can review the progress in the patent information world. Looking back, we are all agreed that much has been done, but there is still a long way to go. Many countries of the world are still not featured in even our largest and most comprehensive databases, even at the level of basic bibliographic information, much less current legal status. It is perhaps worth remembering that the Paris Convention specifies at Article 12 that :
(1) Each country of the Union undertakes to establish a special industrial property service…
(2) This service shall publish an official periodical journal. It shall publish regularly:
(a) the names of the proprietors of patents granted, with a brief designation of the inventions patented… [my emphasis]
Unfortunately, the Convention nowhere indicates a definition of the term “regularly”. If the word is used in the everyday meaning, then I suggest that certain states of the Paris Union are not yet fulfilling even these most basic information supply requirements, and until they do so, there will be no “world-wide” patent database in the true sense of the word.
For those of you eagerly awaiting the announcement of the venue for next year, the time
came at the close of the session. EPIDOS 2002 will travel to Denmark, to be held in
co-operation with the Danish Patent Office in the city of Copenhagen.