Overview

Now in its twelfth year, the PIUG Biotechnology Conference focuses on best practices for patent information professionals who specialize in biotechnology search and analysis. Within a changing business environment, patent searchers continue to provide value to companies and clients by maintaining contemporary knowledge of resources, technologies and industry trends.  The theme for this year's conference is: The Evolution of Biotech Searching: New Approaches for Old Problems.

The program will focus on:

• Presentations on scientific resources that will help biotech patent searchers develop and maintain their scientific knowledge and searching skills. Topic themes include technology platforms, biosimilars, including exclusivity information and the BPCIA “patent dance”, bi- or multi-specific antibodies as well as modifications, digital health including wearable devices, therapeutic vaccines, unitary patent, gene therapy, gene editing (CRISPR), multi-CDR searching, combination therapeutics, advanced sequence  searching, medical devices and diagnostics.
• The use of machine learning or artificial intelligence in biotech/patent searching
• How changes in the law or regulatory procedures impact biotech searching
• The use of patent information as a pre-competitive intelligence tool, intellectual property valuation studies, in licensing/out licensing opportunity identification and patent landscaping

Practical suggestions to illustrate these themes are, as follows:

• Best practices in constructing patent search strategies, reporting formats, and use of new tools for the organization/management of patent alerts/watches
• Showcase methods for effective client engagement, user experience, attorney outreach and time management
• Description of use cases in the academic, corporate and other sectors
• Examples of how a work product supports or is a component of business decisions
• Review the use of patent information as a competitive intelligence resource
• Approaches to fostering continuous improvement, i.e., use of analytical &/or visualization applications, implementing quality control guidelines, team collaboration and knowledge sharing practices.

Conference Schedule

• Tuesday, February 20: Workshops
• Wednesday, February 21: Plenary Sessions and Exhibition. Printable 1-Page Agenda.

2018 Program Committee