Saturday, May 20
Workshops
8:30-4:30

8:30am-12:00pm

Mirage Room
(2^nd floor)

Mirage Room
(2^nd floor)

 Monday, May 22
Morning
7:30am-12:00pm

Welcome and Introductory Remarks Elyse Turner, PIUG Chair

Title: "Do You Truly Leverage What You Already Know?"

When most people think about patent searching, they think about getting onto a database and doing a search. In doing so, they rely upon their existing knowledge of classifications, common terminology and the like. But do you really leverage everything you know when you do this? Or are you just repeating the same steps over and over? The continuing explosive growth in patent filings and the importance of intellectual property for business means that we must all become more efficient at doing the background art, landscape, due diligence and other searches that are in ever increasing demand. Fully leveraging everything we already know is essential to doing to learning how to work smarter, not just harder.

Contact Details: Charles Dennis
Medtronic, Inc.
Mail Stop CW210
7000 Central Avenue NE
Minneapolis, MN 55432
Tel: 763-514-4568
Email: charles.l.dennis @ medtronic.com

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Title:  "The Ever-Changing Role of Information Analysts in Pharmaceutical R&D"

Drug discovery is a long and expensive process. Staying on top of changes in our industry is critical to our success. The huge amount of information available to us presents opportunities to react quicker to paradigm shifts, but for scientists focused on their own research, this can be a challenging task. This is where an information analyst can be an asset. We are no longer only a 'service' function, but have become active and integral members of corporate and R&D project teams.
To be successful in our industry, we need to shorten development time and decrease cost. This presentation will highlight the role of an information analyst in moving a compound through the R&D pipeline. The value of an information analyst is not easy to quantify but our contributions to the success of our companies can be significant.
 

Contact Details:
Doreen Alberts Associate Director
Knowledge Management
Theravance Inc.
901 Gateway Blvd.
South San Francisco, CA 94080

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Title: 3M Information Research & Solutions in 2010 - Mapping and Driving the Future of a Corporate Information Organization

Throughout 2004 and early 2005, the management team of 3M's worldwide information organization undertook a project to envision the information organization, including staff, services and resources, needed to support 3M's information requirements in 2010. Using several intersecting strategic planning porcesses, a map for the future was created along with a plan for closing the gaps to meet future organizational needs. This talk will discuss the strategic planning processes used, the outcomes, and current activities on the path to 2010.
 

Contact Details:
Martha Ellison,3M
3M Center, Building 201-2C-12
Maplewood, MN 55144
Tel: 651-736-5565
Email: mbellison @ mmm.com

Denise Rabogliatti, 3M
3M Center, Bldg. 224-2E-40
Maplewood, MN 55145
Tel:651-736-8095
Email: dgrabogliatti @ mmm.com

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Title: Open Patent Review Initiative

The United States wants to improve a world class patent system to remain consistent with what is expected in the world community. This is a critical requirement in the face of new technologies for handling the information base used by patent offices for prior art seaches. The USPTO and private industry are engaged in various projects to improve the US patent system in a challenging environment involving rapid growth of new technologies and a culture that is highly litigious. One such effort is the Community Patent Review. This proposal seeks to make published patent applications more readily available to communities of expert reviewers by incorporating an alerting feature into the existing PTO database for published applications. This system will allow the public to register searches and receive periodic updates. The proposal envisions the creation of community platforms perhaps in the form of web-based communities in which participants might seek experts and actively discuss published applications.

Another project is providing Open Source materials as prior art. The project focuses on rendering the millions of lines of open source code available in various online repositories into a form that is suitable for use by examiners. Principle items in the project include a tagging mechanism that attaches searchable functional descriptors to code at varying levels of granularity. A third and academically driven project (separate from the patent office) is the Patent Quality Index in which the objective is to create a numeric index that represents the quality of a patent. The index would likely be comprised of sub-indices which in turn would reflect combinations of data regarding various aspects of the patent preparation and examination process indicating the clarity of the patent record and the rigor of the examination.

Contact Details:
William J. McGinnis--IPLaw Counsel
Rochester, Minnesota, IBM Corporation
3605 Hwy. 52 N
Rochester MN 55901
Tel: 507-253-5331
Email: mcginpat @ us.ibm.com

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Title: How to Optimize Search Reports for Clients - Tips From an Independent Search Firm

It is a continual challenge to be able to search the patent and non-patent literature effectively, especially for independent search firms that expect to make a living from their expert services. You need to manage both the data expenses and researcher’s time tightly and produce a well-organized, concise report that serves the client well.

The question often becomes not, ‘Does this information exist in the published domain?’ – you know that it does – but, ‘What is the best (i.e. least expensive) way to extract it?’. There are multiple choices dependent on your level of expertise and datasource subscription options. This presentation will highlight some of the most important aspects of technical searching that a resourceful searcher needs to remember in order to serve the client well. For example, some of the differences in the way the various patent classification systems are used and applied by examiners and indexers may considerably affect ability to gather and report complete and reliable data.

Following data gathering, which tools should be used to extract and present the most pertinent data? Some real-life examples of errors and problems encountered during research projects will be discussed, with a focus on life science and law firm clients.

Contact Details:
Dr. Alison Taylor
Threshold Information Inc.
1910 First St.
Highland Park
IL 60035
Tel: 847 433 8306
Email: ataylor @ threshinfo.com
General Email: infopros @ threshinfo.com

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Title: Patent Analysis & Visualization for Technology Assessmen

Access to technical information contained in patent documents is a key element in fostering the use of patent system, for innovation and creation. For this reason, knowing how to turn voluminous patent information to knowledge for better business decisions is vital.
By working together with your Information provider, R & D Technologists, Patent Attorneys and IP Managers you can answer complex questions that can be used to make better business decisions. For instance they can:
- Analyze the patent landscape to determine who, what, where, when and how.
- Track competitive intelligence to find out what your competitors are doing.
- Understand “White Space” or areas of commercial potential significance to the company.
- Identify, connect and develop opportunities for existing technology.

Contact Details:
Yateen Pargaonkar
Information Scientist, P & G
8700 Mason-Montgomery RD, MBC
Mason, Ohio 45040
Tel: 513-622-2861
Email: pargaonkar.y @ pg.com

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Title: Searching for Needles in Sewing Boxes – Advantages of Subject Specific Databases Over Uncontrolled Free Text Files

We often speak of searching for a particular bit of published information as looking for a needle in a haystack. In recent years the quantity of published matter has grown enormously while advances in computer technology have made more and more publications available in full text databases and Internet sites. As the virtual haystacks have grown, recognizing the needles among the straw has become more difficult.

A more efficient way to search for a needle is to look in a sewing box – a specialized container for needles and related materials. Subject-based databases with controlled indexing terms and vocabularies are the sewing baskets in the world of information retrieval. This paper will give examples of the difficulties posed by searching uncontrolled free text and the advantages of searching for information in databases customized to the technologies being searched.

Contact Details:
Edlyn S. Simmons
Section Manager - Patent Information
Intellectual Property & Business Information Services
The P&G US Business Services Co.
5299 Spring Grove Ave.
Cincinnati, Ohio 45217
Phone: (513) 627-5664
Fax: (513) 627-6854
Email: simmons.es @ pg.com

Alena Chadwick
Senior Information Scientist
Intellectual Property & Business Information Services
The P&G US Business Services Co
6100 Center Hill Rd.
Cincinnati, OH 45224
Phone: (513) 634-6562
Fax (513) 634-1515
Email: chadwick.af @ pg.com

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Title: Inexpensive Methods for Formatting and Presenting Patent Intelligence

Patent intelligence is increasingly required to satisfy business decisions outside of the legal function. Often the results of patent searches are deep sets of documents possessing multiple points of interest. Comprehension of search results is improved when presentations can be tailored, delivered and formatted to the needs of busy decision-makers. To that end, we have developed and will demonstrate a workflow of inexpensive database (FileMaker Pro) and presentation (Microsoft Office) tools to maximize the impact and minimize the cost of preparing well-designed deliverables. This presentation will demonstrate an inexpensive solution to formatting and presenting patent search results that include a) patent document data and b) patent data visualizations.

Contact Details:
Barry Brager, Managing Partner
Perception Partners, Inc.
bbrager @ perceptionpartners.com
768 Marietta St. NW
Suite 102
Atlanta, GA 30318
T: (404) 523-5990
F: (770) 818-5521
www.perceptionpartners.com

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Title: Pumps, Valves, and Dispensers: Tools and Techniques for Finding Device Patents

Searching in the ever expanding field of mechanical and device patents has its own challenges, pitfalls and solutions. This presentation will consider the strengths and weaknesses of existing sources and tools for finding device patents from the perspective of searching at an independent technology consultancy. Drawings often form an important part of the patent specification for inventions in the field of mechanical and device patents and I will look at the use and value of drawings as a means of identifying relevant patents. The talk will be illustrated throughout with some examples of typical patent searches in the fields of pumps and dispensers. Suggestions will also be made for future tools that could particularly benefit searchers of mechanical and device patents.

Contact Details:
Jane List
TTP (The Technology Partnership plc)
Melbourn Science Park
Cambridge Rd
Melbourn, Herts
SG8 6EE
ENGLAND
Tel: (+44) 1763 262626
Fax: (+44) 1763 261582
Email: jane.list @ ttp.com
URL: www.ttp.com

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Title: Automated Patent Portfolio Analysis and Categorization

The presentation discusses methods for generating patent portfolio landscapes of mechanical patents using predefined categorization rule sets. The presentation will include an example of rule set development using a combination of patent related characteristics. Application of commercially available search and analysis tools will be presented as well as visualization techniques.

Contact Details:
Stephen K. Sampson
Caterpillar, Inc.
100 N.E. Adams Street
Peoria, IL 61629-6490
Tel: 309 675 4922
Email: Stephen.Sampson @ CAT.com

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Title: Thomson Scientific Solutions: Meeting Business Needs Through an Integrated Information Solution

This presentation examines the proven and potential benefits that result from an Integrated Information Solution. As a long time provider of industry leading intellectual property, scientific literature, and other content and solution offerings, Thomson Scientific has been at the forefront of delivering products and services to meet the information needs of customers.

Drawing on a number of customer case studies, including the leading automotive safety systems developer, TRW, Stuart Dodd offers two perspectives. First, he will focus on how search techniques and results are impacted through the integration of different contents sets such as Derwent World Patents Index and full text patent collections as well as scientific literature and proceedings.

Stuart will then look at the wider picture and how advanced data management, data integration, and data visualization tools can reside within an organization’s workflow and be of benefit to organizations facing increasing demands to improve productivity, remove inefficient processes, and bring products to market faster and in the face of external competitive threats. These integrations can benefit all information users but especially Engineers, Researchers, IP and Information professionals.

Finally, Stuart will conclude with the potential next steps the integration of Thomson Scientific information solutions may take and what that could mean for both standard and customized information solutions.

Contact Details: Stuart Dodd
Thomson Scientific
Tel: 720.406.1207
Email: stuart.dodd @ thomson.com

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Title: Patents on Campus: The Role of Patent Information in Academic Research, Teaching, Learning and Technology Transfer

Since passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, the number of patents granted to U.S. universities and public research institutes has increased ten-fold. In 2003 alone, universities and research institutes in the U.S. and Canada filed approximately 16,000 new invention disclosures and received 8,000 patents. European governments are considering legislation similar to Bayh-Dole in order to encourage more academic researchers to commercialize their discoveries and innovations. This phenomena is not limited to developed countries. In China, academic patenting is increasing at a faster rate than published scholarly articles, due, in part, to intellectual property law reform and government policies encouraging domestic innovation and commercialization. Patents are increasingly important to academic institutions worldwide. This session will explore how patent information is being used by university and not-for-profit researchers, instructors, librarians and technology transfer officers.

Contact Details:
Michael J. White
Librarian for Research Services
Engineering and Science Library
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario
Canada
Tel:
eMail

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Title: Overview of Academic Patenting and Licensing

In 1980 legislation enacted by Congress known as the Bayh-Dole Act, radically changed how universities treated intellectual property created by their faculty. The legislation not only allowed but encouraged the patenting and licensing of federally funded technology created by university inventors. While slow at first to embrace this concept, universities are now in the "business" of patenting and licensing their inventions. License revenue has become a major funding source for universities as federal and state support has declined and tuition increases have not kept up with the rising cost of education and research. Patent prosecution and technology transfer has become big business for universities. This session will provide an overview of the university technology transfer process from invention disclosure, market evaluation, patent filing decisions, and ultimately licensing to an established or start-up company.

Contact Details:
Susan McFadden Patow, MBA, MS
Senior Licensing Associate
Patents & Technology Marketing
University of Minnesota
Suite 450 McNamara Alumni Center
200 Oak Street, SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Tel: 612-624-3966
Fax 612-624-6554
Email: patow001 @ umn.edu

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Title: Patents 101: Teaching Patents to Engineering Students

 Wendt Library is a U.S. Patent and Trademark Depository Library, one of 83 across the country. The library serves the University of Wisconsin-Madison's College of Engineering and works with faculty to promote information literacy for engineering students. Many engineering courses emphasize creativity and design, and campus competitions reward student invention. Wendt librarians are working to increase their visibility as a resource in College instructional programs, and strive to integrate the teaching of patents into the curriculum. This session will give an overview of how engineering students are introduced to the patent literature and to the concepts of the patenting process.

Contact Details:
Nancy Spitzer
Patents/Reports Librarian
Kurt F. Wendt
University of Wisconsin-Madison
215 N. Randall Ave.
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: (608) 265-9802
Email: spitzer @ engr.wisc.edu

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Title: Tips for Cost Effective and Efficient MMS Searching

Merged Markush Service (MMS) is a product which allows the searching and retrieval of real and prophetic structures described in the patent literature. The recent transfer of this program from IBM to UNIX platform has resulted in an update of procedures for using this program. The following topics will be described in this presentation: (1) considerations in creating a structure query, (2) methods of creating, inputting, and correcting the query, (3) the platforms with which to access MMS, and (4) the various search options. Costs of MMS and housekeeping tips as well as techniques in finding the references for MMS Compound Numbers (CN) which are missing in the Derwent World Patent Index database, will also be discussed.

Contact Details:
Judy Johnson Philipsen
Email: judyphilipsen @ comcast.net

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Title: Are Long Chemistry-Patent Publications by Definition Difficult to Understand and Analyze?

Those dealing with patent publications realize that the average size of patent documents is continuously growing. Increasing number of patent pages, long lists of claimed compounds, huge Markush structures make understanding and analysis of patent documents challenging.

How do providers of databases built from patent publications deal with this phenomenon? What indexing concepts and analysis tools might help to handle these issues? Taking a closer look into the new MDL Patent Chemistry Database the author will describe how the display of so-called ‘Markush Families”, Markush reactions and the export of patent-specific data to tables help to make analyzing of long chemistry-related patent documents easier.

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Title: The Rise and Fall of Stopword Lists in Patent Searching and Mapping

Stopword lists are collections of so-called 'noise' words, which appear frequently in documents but are considered as non information-bearing. They have been introduced as a way to enhance information retrieval e.g. patent information retrieval in 1958 and were further developed until the 1970's. Since then, they have remained almost unchanged albeit they have gained importance by forming the basis for advanced tools such as text mining, mapping or clustering tools. Moreover, they are currently mostly used in static form whereas they could benefit from the latest findings of information science.

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Title: To Pastures New - A Searcher's Guide to Less Well-used Fields of Data

Human nature tends to encourage us to stay within our comfort zone, and patent searchers are no exception. As a result, many searchers only develop practical experience in using a relatively small number of search fields, within a subset of the commercial or free-of-charge patent databases. This leaves a variety of lesser ones which are used more rarely, or never. The purpose of this talk is to describe some search tips and techniques which put these less well-known fields to good use, either alone or in conjunction with other data. Examples will include interpretation of EPO data, when the same field can mean more than one thing, the use of attorney names and inventors addresses, opposition data from single country files, and quasi-legal status data from application number sub-fields.

Contact Details: Magister Ltd.,
Crown House,
231 Kings Road,
Reading,
Berkshire, RG1 4LS
United Kingdom
Tel: (+44) (0)118 966 6520
Email: stevea @ magister.co.uk

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Title: The Application of Text Mining in the Analysis of Patent Literature

Intellectual Property (IP) management has become a critical business tool for pharmaceutical companies to protect existing products, foster innovation and increase sales potential. This trend has been especially accentuated with the ever increasing competition from generic and “me-too” drugs and the importance of licensing (in and out) in the portfolio mix of all major players.

Patent analysis is a key element that supports the definition and execution of an IP strategy and requires analyzing thoroughly the patent literature to find information, such as:
- What is the patent landscape in a given area?
- What is the scope of application for this set of patents?
- Who are the most prominent actors in this area?
- Etc.

But to answer these questions and others, patent specialists need to sift through large collections of patent documents, looking for specific clues. Online databases and visualization tools can provide a first answer to those questions but fail to offer a user friendly environment to conduct searches and analyze the content of patents in a flexible way with the desired granularity for the requested information.

In this presentation we will detail TEMIS’ approach to patent analysis with our text mining based solution, the TEMIS IP-Miner™. Built on a core of highly customizable and domain specific knowledge tools (Skill Cartridge™), the IP-Miner offers a unique interface to conduct searches, analysis and reporting from large set of document sources, including patent literature, news feeds and scientific and medical literature. Using a flexible semantic layer based on our awarded Skill Cartridge™ system, the platform enables users to access and represent information in various ways from chemical structure searches to concept analysis.

This presentation is also the occasion to share different user experiences with the IP Miner and illustrate the advantages and limits of an integrated and flexible text mining approach to patent analysis.

Contact Details:
Christophe Beguel
TEMIS
Tel: 571 235 8395
Email: christophe.beguel @ temis-group.com

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Title: Search Strategies and the Reformed IPC

Since its creation, the main objective of the International Patent Classification (IPC) has been to constitute an essential search tool for the retrieval of patent documents. In 1999, the Reform process was launched in order to modernise the structure, rules and tools of the IPC, in order to maintain its effectiveness also in the contemporary electronic documentation and search environment.
In January 2006 the reformed IPC entered into force. This presentation gives an overview of the Reform-related changes that have a direct impact on the search and offers some suggestions on how to adapt on-line search strategies in view of the new possibilities offered by the reformed IPC, with particular reference to patentability searches.
Short Outline:
- Aspects of the reformed IPC that have an impact on the search
- Relevant statistics relating to the inventory of the new IPC
- Non-Reform related IPC changes
- New ways to find relevant classification places in the IPC
- Types of patent search
- An approach and model for a structured search process
- Novel adaptations of search parameters rendered possible by the reformed IPC
- Aspects of the implementation of the reformed IPC
- Free internet portals for patent search using IPC
- Introduction of the ECLA Reform.

Contact Details:
Pasquale Foglia
European Patent Office
Patentlaan 2
2288 EE Rijswijk, NL
Tel: +31 70 340 3792
Email: pfoglia @ epo.org

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Title: The IPC and Other Animals

The IPC reform was the dominant topic at the EPO Patent Information Conference in Budapest last November; a substantial part of this presentation will focus on what has happened with the IPC since then and provide an answer to the question, "Did the launch of the new IPC on the 1 January go smoothly for the EPO?" We shall look at the main EPO databases, and esp@cenet, and report on which data is now fully in line with IPC version 8, which is not, and what the time-scale is for further actions.

Other than the IPC, the presentation will also briefly touch on issues raised at the EPO Patent Information Conference, such as nanotechnology searches (including the "Y01N" classification tag), the newly launched "Chinese patent information helpdesk", and the EPO declarations of "Search" or "Partial search" for complex applications.

Contact Details:
Daniel Shalloe
European Patent Office
Rennweg 12
1030 Vienna
Austria
Tel:
eMail:

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Title: Freedom-to-Operate Analysis: Streamlining the Process and Avoiding Landmines

Most business leaders assume that having a patent automatically gives you the right to make or sell a product or service – and to be the only one to do it. The truth is that patents don’t give the right to make or sell anything. Business leaders must understand what a patent is – and isn’t – in today’s innovation economy. Protecting innovation is only part of the game; avoiding infringement of others’ patents is another significant part that often goes unnoticed at first. The key for avoiding infringement landmines is getting a complete picture early in the game and exercising the options that are available. There’s no better time to avoid future litigation than before you have invested the time and resources to move something into the commercial marketplace – including all the marketing, advertising, branding, and packaging that goes with it. This presentation will focus on the importance of incorporating a freedom-to-operate analysis early on in the product development process and will include several case studies.

Contact Details:
JiNan Glasgow
CEO, Neopatents
PO Box 28539
Raleigh, NC 27611-8539
Tel: +1 919 664 8222
Fax: +1 919 664-8625
Email: jinan @ neopatents.com

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Title: Requiring Pre-Filing Patentability Searches: An Emerging USPTO Policy

In public meetings, USPTO has announced its interest in moving toward a policy of requiring pre-filing patentability searches for all applications. These would have to be conducted according to guidelines USPTO will provide. In the meantime, several Rule changes have instituted this requirement in selected areas, and as such, they represent small steps toward the eventual policy. The impact on USPTO quality and pendency would be very positive. The impact on private sector patent information and search services would also be very positive; although adjustments or enhancements would be needed by both USPTO in their approach to guidelines and by the private sector in some of the specifics of services offered. There are some potential barriers that could block, or, as a minimum, force USPTO to alter an eventual blanket requirement. This presentation will discuss the implications for the private sector patent information services industry and private sector patent searchers, and the problems that will need to be overcome to implement the policy in full.

Contact Details:
Joe Ebersole
2101 Conn. Ave.
No. 63; Washington, DC 20008
Office Cell: 202-329-5380
Home: 202-387-3509
Email: JLE2 @ aol.com

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Title: KIPRIS (Korean Industrial Property Rights Information Service)

KIPRIS is the most comprehensive patent information search service in Korea which covers Korean patents, utility models, designs and trademarks. KIPI(Korea Institute of Patent Information), on behalf of KIPO(Korean Intellectual Property Office), started the service in 1996 and KIPRIS has become free of charge since 2000.
For patent information user in the world, KIPRIS began its KPA(English abstracts of Korean patents) search service through the internet in 1999. Moreover, KIPRIS added new English interface for patents, utility models, designs and trademarks in 2005.

This presentation aims at informing the accessibility to Korean patent information through free source, “KIPRIS”, by introducing the features and coverage as well as how to retrieve the best results.

Contact Details:
Choi, YooChan
IT Planning & Development Team, KIPI
KIPS, 647-9 Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam-gu,
Seoul, Korea 135-980
Tel.: +82-2-3452-8144 ext. 333
Fax: +82-2-3453-2967
Email: uchan2 @ kipi.or.kr
URL : eng.kipi.or.kr
 

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