- Email: [email protected]
Richard Kurt: 1950–2006
World Patent Information 29 (2007) 64–66 www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
Personal report
Richard Kurt : 1950–2006
The patent search staff at 3M continue to miss their colleague Richard Kurt following his untimely death from cancer in April 2006. Beyond the great things he did for 3M and the patent community in general, he was a great friend to all of us. Whether we needed help on Derwent coding, wordsmithing of something we were writing, or methods of handling difficult people, his door was always open and he would remain cordial and welcoming even when preoccupied with problems of his own. Our dedication to carrying on his spirit of openness and caring is our memorial to Richard. Richard Kurt’s career at 3M amplified the experience and raw knowledge he gained working in the patent information industry for over 30 years. He combined his knowledge of information technologies (from Derwent
doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2006.09.002
indexing to latent semantic analysis) with understanding of emerging technologies to critically evaluate developments in patent portfolio analysis. His commitment to making patent information understandable to technologists greatly improved 3M’s intellectual property portfolio. What’s more, he was always able to deliver his criticisms with empathy and wit, allowing the target of his jibes the ability to make necessary corrections with dignity intact. After earlier stops at Derwent, Orbit, and Questel, Richard arrived at 3M with experience in patent classification schema, developing patent information products, mentoring, coaching and managing staff, providing stateof-the-art, patentability, validity/infringement, and rightto-practice information research, for trend analysis,
Personal report / World Patent Information 29 (2007) 64–66
intellectual property assessment and competitive intelligence. This varied experience increased 3M’s competitive edge by providing patent professionals with insight into the nuances and uses of database structure and coding, along with the vendor perspective into information industry developments. While at 3M, he handled the most complex IP information research in the company. Providing support to the corporate laboratories, he was faced with highly exploratory research requests challenging him to understand emerging technologies. His ‘‘ground level’’ knowledge of 3M and the IP information landscape allowed him to make fundamental contributions to many 3M programs, including multilayer optical films, active signage, radiofrequency identification tags and methods, and laser-induced thermal imaging. The results of his research work helped 3M identify new opportunities, ensured stronger patent positions, provided 3M the freeedom to operate and reduced inappropriate patent filings. He also became a leading expert in the development and use of text visualization technologies for large sets of patent, technical and business information. He also made many contributions to the management of the 3M corporate library system. His multiples roles as mentor, adviser, innovator, and analyst helped the library staff improve their management skills and increase their efficiency. His international perspective, gained not only in his prior positions, but also by continued engagement with the patent information community, allowed him to mentor international colleagues and helped them develop their research expertise. Most recently, he was involved in formulating a new business strategy for the library and articulating a value proposition for the future of the corporate library in a global organization. Besides his contributions to his employer, he continued to conduct dialogues with patent information suppliers. Richard’s intellectual honesty was valued especially by those who were trying to offer new information products. Often, his comments improved their products, both to their benefit and to 3M’s. Specifically, he served on the boards of several international patent organizations, and regularly contributed to worldwide patent conferences. In reviewing all the accomplishments and projects, all the interactions with external vendors, and all the people Richard influenced, one theme stands out: making patent information usable by the people who need it most to advance the goals of the companies they work for and help them personally succeed. Richard himself would never have described his way of working as a philosophy, but in many ways he personified a ‘‘leadership through service’’ philosophic approach that enabled all those in contact with him to come away having benefited from his words. On top of all this, Richard was great fun to work with. His humor lightened many a serious meeting, without losing sight of the goal and getting the work done. He proved that patent searching can be fun and, that with laughter, much can be accomplished. The patent search staff at 3M
65
I remember Richard Kurt from very far back in my patent information career. I met him when I was working for 3M and he was with Derwent. Other contributors to this article trace his career; he was one of those peripatetic information professionals who at one point or another worked with a database producer (Derwent) and with online hosts (Questel and Orbit); and finally as a searcher with a large technical company (3M, as it happens), making excellent use of what he had learned from his earlier experiences. But valuable as he was to me as an information resource, my fondest memories of him are as an actor (?!). Back in ancient history, in Harry Allcock’s heyday, a group of patent searchers gave an impromptu reading of a play (Oscar Wilde’s ‘‘The Importance of Being Ernest’’) on Tuesday night during the 1988 annual IFI meeting at the Airlie Foundation, starting what became known as the IFFI Players. Very quickly the readings became performances, staged with what props we could scratch up, the actors reading from their scripts as they went through their paces. The last IFI meeting at Airlie took place in 1998, so in 1999 the IFFI Players’ venue changed to the annual PIUG meetings – finally assuring us of an audience bigger than the cast! We always did comedies, and every year I had to find a play with a larger-than-ever cast because so many people wanted to be in the play. Richard was a part of this fun from very early on. My favorite memory comes from when he played Colonel Pickering in our production of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘‘Pygmalion.’’ Up till then, we had been working with the original plays, somewhat abridged to fit into a two-hour time slot, but otherwise as written. Well, Richard changed all that. When Colonel Pickering first encounters Henry Higgins, he is supposed to say, ‘‘I just came from India to meet you.’’ Richard, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, said, ‘‘I just came from the Patent Office to meet you’’ – the IFFI Players’ very first patent-related ad-lib. Stu Kaback, who played Higgins, was rather taken aback; but the actors soon got into the spirit of the thing, coming up with more and more outrageous ad-libs as the years went by; and the Players’ last two plays have been completely re-written to include patent-related themes. Way to go, Richard! You started a tradition. How I wish you had been here with us to be in this year’s play! Nancy Lambert Pinole, CA, United States E-mail address: [email protected]
I first met Richard in 1985. Richard and a colleague interviewed me for a new position at Derwent as the North American Online Trainer. The Derwent office had been open for only a couple of years and the WPI file had just been loaded on Dialog. I was working as a temp at IBM as an online searching assistant (at the time, the official name for the job was ’’online keyboardist’’), but my tenure at IBM was ending and I needed a new job. I later found
66
Personal report / World Patent Information 29 (2007) 64–66
out that Richard lobbied to hire me; his colleague was less enthusiastic as I have no technical degree. The Derwent office at that time was a crazy place, full of strong personalities. Richard and I shared an office and just kept plugging away, despite everything going on around us. We also had fun – Richard was very competitive and we played backgammon at lunch almost everyday. We tried other strategy related games, but I soon learned that I was no competition for Richard. He hated to lose! Thanks to Richard, I embarked on a career that has now spanned over 20 years. Over the course of those years, we also became close friends. We had many shared memories – from apple picking in the Virginia mountains, pre and post marriage and kids (for me), to various jobs and slight career changes. Richard was a great friend and mentor. He was one of the few people I could talk to on the phone for hours. I already miss him terribly and will for a long time. Holly Chong-Williams Thomson Scientific E-mail address: [email protected]
I first met Richard Kurt not long after I became one of the three employees of the newly created Derwent USA office in McLean, Virginia in 1981. Richard was doing a PLASDOC coding training tour through the U.S. along with some of the Derwent Chemical Coding trainers and they stopped by our office. Sometimes it seemed that many of the Derwent staff in London viewed the newly formed U.S. office as a threat and would only grudgingly share their knowledge of the intricate Derwent systems with us. Perhaps because he was an American himself, Richard was different and openly offered us assistance. As I became more involved in working with many of Derwent’s largest U.S. subscribers, I learned that this was characteristic of Richard and because of it, he was deeply respected and highly regarded by them. After he moved to the U.S. with his family in 1983 and joined the staff at our office, Richard and I became friends as well as colleagues. We initiated Derwent’s trade show exhibition program in the U.S. and procured the exhibit stand for those shows. Because of the lean budget Derwent provided for the U.S. office, we had to do this on a shoestring (‘‘penny wise and pound foolish’’ was a saying we often applied to our masters across the Atlantic). All we could afford was a stand consisting of panels supported by a rickety framework of tubular rods. Since we couldn’t
afford to hire laborers to assemble the stand, that task fell to Richard and me. It must have been comical to those around us to see these two men with engineering degrees struggling to try to figure out which tubes fit with which connectors and, literally, which end was up. The hours we spent getting the stand assembled and then attempting to resolve our aesthetic differences regarding arrangement of the graphic panels and lights, was the closest that Richard and I ever came to physical blows. During our final years at Derwent, Richard and I were drawn closer together by some of the management changes there. Richard and I came to feel that Derwent’s technically complex, multi-thousand dollar subscription services were being marketed in the same way as textbooks and that patent knowledgeable people like Richard and me were viewed as being over-qualified for the job. Needless to say, that resulted in a tense and uncomfortable environment in our little office in McLean. However, even in those dark times, Richard’s famous sense of humor was able to buoy our spirits. Perhaps it was from his lifelong devotion to Monty Python that Richard was able to find ways to create mirth about our situation and lighten the atmosphere. I left Derwent for IBM early in 1989 and Richard left soon after that for Questel. Even though we didn’t see each other very frequently then and especially after he moved to St. Paul to join 3M, we remained friends. Due to Richard’s geniality and natural ebullience, whenever we’d run into each other at a PIUG meeting or trade show, I’d hear Richard’s hearty laugh from across the room and I felt that we were picking up where we had left off the last time we had seen each other as if no time had transpired in the interim. I will miss that laugh and I will sorely miss Richard. Jeff Forman E-mail address: [email protected]
Although I had only known Richard a little, from discussions at PIUG Conferences, the IFFI Players and as a referee, I also found him very friendly, helpful and knowledgeable, and I am more than happy to concur with all that has been written above. Michael Blackman Editor-in-Chief World Patent Information
Personal report
Richard Kurt : 1950–2006
The patent search staff at 3M continue to miss their colleague Richard Kurt following his untimely death from cancer in April 2006. Beyond the great things he did for 3M and the patent community in general, he was a great friend to all of us. Whether we needed help on Derwent coding, wordsmithing of something we were writing, or methods of handling difficult people, his door was always open and he would remain cordial and welcoming even when preoccupied with problems of his own. Our dedication to carrying on his spirit of openness and caring is our memorial to Richard. Richard Kurt’s career at 3M amplified the experience and raw knowledge he gained working in the patent information industry for over 30 years. He combined his knowledge of information technologies (from Derwent
doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2006.09.002
indexing to latent semantic analysis) with understanding of emerging technologies to critically evaluate developments in patent portfolio analysis. His commitment to making patent information understandable to technologists greatly improved 3M’s intellectual property portfolio. What’s more, he was always able to deliver his criticisms with empathy and wit, allowing the target of his jibes the ability to make necessary corrections with dignity intact. After earlier stops at Derwent, Orbit, and Questel, Richard arrived at 3M with experience in patent classification schema, developing patent information products, mentoring, coaching and managing staff, providing stateof-the-art, patentability, validity/infringement, and rightto-practice information research, for trend analysis,
Personal report / World Patent Information 29 (2007) 64–66
intellectual property assessment and competitive intelligence. This varied experience increased 3M’s competitive edge by providing patent professionals with insight into the nuances and uses of database structure and coding, along with the vendor perspective into information industry developments. While at 3M, he handled the most complex IP information research in the company. Providing support to the corporate laboratories, he was faced with highly exploratory research requests challenging him to understand emerging technologies. His ‘‘ground level’’ knowledge of 3M and the IP information landscape allowed him to make fundamental contributions to many 3M programs, including multilayer optical films, active signage, radiofrequency identification tags and methods, and laser-induced thermal imaging. The results of his research work helped 3M identify new opportunities, ensured stronger patent positions, provided 3M the freeedom to operate and reduced inappropriate patent filings. He also became a leading expert in the development and use of text visualization technologies for large sets of patent, technical and business information. He also made many contributions to the management of the 3M corporate library system. His multiples roles as mentor, adviser, innovator, and analyst helped the library staff improve their management skills and increase their efficiency. His international perspective, gained not only in his prior positions, but also by continued engagement with the patent information community, allowed him to mentor international colleagues and helped them develop their research expertise. Most recently, he was involved in formulating a new business strategy for the library and articulating a value proposition for the future of the corporate library in a global organization. Besides his contributions to his employer, he continued to conduct dialogues with patent information suppliers. Richard’s intellectual honesty was valued especially by those who were trying to offer new information products. Often, his comments improved their products, both to their benefit and to 3M’s. Specifically, he served on the boards of several international patent organizations, and regularly contributed to worldwide patent conferences. In reviewing all the accomplishments and projects, all the interactions with external vendors, and all the people Richard influenced, one theme stands out: making patent information usable by the people who need it most to advance the goals of the companies they work for and help them personally succeed. Richard himself would never have described his way of working as a philosophy, but in many ways he personified a ‘‘leadership through service’’ philosophic approach that enabled all those in contact with him to come away having benefited from his words. On top of all this, Richard was great fun to work with. His humor lightened many a serious meeting, without losing sight of the goal and getting the work done. He proved that patent searching can be fun and, that with laughter, much can be accomplished. The patent search staff at 3M
65
I remember Richard Kurt from very far back in my patent information career. I met him when I was working for 3M and he was with Derwent. Other contributors to this article trace his career; he was one of those peripatetic information professionals who at one point or another worked with a database producer (Derwent) and with online hosts (Questel and Orbit); and finally as a searcher with a large technical company (3M, as it happens), making excellent use of what he had learned from his earlier experiences. But valuable as he was to me as an information resource, my fondest memories of him are as an actor (?!). Back in ancient history, in Harry Allcock’s heyday, a group of patent searchers gave an impromptu reading of a play (Oscar Wilde’s ‘‘The Importance of Being Ernest’’) on Tuesday night during the 1988 annual IFI meeting at the Airlie Foundation, starting what became known as the IFFI Players. Very quickly the readings became performances, staged with what props we could scratch up, the actors reading from their scripts as they went through their paces. The last IFI meeting at Airlie took place in 1998, so in 1999 the IFFI Players’ venue changed to the annual PIUG meetings – finally assuring us of an audience bigger than the cast! We always did comedies, and every year I had to find a play with a larger-than-ever cast because so many people wanted to be in the play. Richard was a part of this fun from very early on. My favorite memory comes from when he played Colonel Pickering in our production of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘‘Pygmalion.’’ Up till then, we had been working with the original plays, somewhat abridged to fit into a two-hour time slot, but otherwise as written. Well, Richard changed all that. When Colonel Pickering first encounters Henry Higgins, he is supposed to say, ‘‘I just came from India to meet you.’’ Richard, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, said, ‘‘I just came from the Patent Office to meet you’’ – the IFFI Players’ very first patent-related ad-lib. Stu Kaback, who played Higgins, was rather taken aback; but the actors soon got into the spirit of the thing, coming up with more and more outrageous ad-libs as the years went by; and the Players’ last two plays have been completely re-written to include patent-related themes. Way to go, Richard! You started a tradition. How I wish you had been here with us to be in this year’s play! Nancy Lambert Pinole, CA, United States E-mail address: [email protected]
I first met Richard in 1985. Richard and a colleague interviewed me for a new position at Derwent as the North American Online Trainer. The Derwent office had been open for only a couple of years and the WPI file had just been loaded on Dialog. I was working as a temp at IBM as an online searching assistant (at the time, the official name for the job was ’’online keyboardist’’), but my tenure at IBM was ending and I needed a new job. I later found
66
Personal report / World Patent Information 29 (2007) 64–66
out that Richard lobbied to hire me; his colleague was less enthusiastic as I have no technical degree. The Derwent office at that time was a crazy place, full of strong personalities. Richard and I shared an office and just kept plugging away, despite everything going on around us. We also had fun – Richard was very competitive and we played backgammon at lunch almost everyday. We tried other strategy related games, but I soon learned that I was no competition for Richard. He hated to lose! Thanks to Richard, I embarked on a career that has now spanned over 20 years. Over the course of those years, we also became close friends. We had many shared memories – from apple picking in the Virginia mountains, pre and post marriage and kids (for me), to various jobs and slight career changes. Richard was a great friend and mentor. He was one of the few people I could talk to on the phone for hours. I already miss him terribly and will for a long time. Holly Chong-Williams Thomson Scientific E-mail address: [email protected]
I first met Richard Kurt not long after I became one of the three employees of the newly created Derwent USA office in McLean, Virginia in 1981. Richard was doing a PLASDOC coding training tour through the U.S. along with some of the Derwent Chemical Coding trainers and they stopped by our office. Sometimes it seemed that many of the Derwent staff in London viewed the newly formed U.S. office as a threat and would only grudgingly share their knowledge of the intricate Derwent systems with us. Perhaps because he was an American himself, Richard was different and openly offered us assistance. As I became more involved in working with many of Derwent’s largest U.S. subscribers, I learned that this was characteristic of Richard and because of it, he was deeply respected and highly regarded by them. After he moved to the U.S. with his family in 1983 and joined the staff at our office, Richard and I became friends as well as colleagues. We initiated Derwent’s trade show exhibition program in the U.S. and procured the exhibit stand for those shows. Because of the lean budget Derwent provided for the U.S. office, we had to do this on a shoestring (‘‘penny wise and pound foolish’’ was a saying we often applied to our masters across the Atlantic). All we could afford was a stand consisting of panels supported by a rickety framework of tubular rods. Since we couldn’t
afford to hire laborers to assemble the stand, that task fell to Richard and me. It must have been comical to those around us to see these two men with engineering degrees struggling to try to figure out which tubes fit with which connectors and, literally, which end was up. The hours we spent getting the stand assembled and then attempting to resolve our aesthetic differences regarding arrangement of the graphic panels and lights, was the closest that Richard and I ever came to physical blows. During our final years at Derwent, Richard and I were drawn closer together by some of the management changes there. Richard and I came to feel that Derwent’s technically complex, multi-thousand dollar subscription services were being marketed in the same way as textbooks and that patent knowledgeable people like Richard and me were viewed as being over-qualified for the job. Needless to say, that resulted in a tense and uncomfortable environment in our little office in McLean. However, even in those dark times, Richard’s famous sense of humor was able to buoy our spirits. Perhaps it was from his lifelong devotion to Monty Python that Richard was able to find ways to create mirth about our situation and lighten the atmosphere. I left Derwent for IBM early in 1989 and Richard left soon after that for Questel. Even though we didn’t see each other very frequently then and especially after he moved to St. Paul to join 3M, we remained friends. Due to Richard’s geniality and natural ebullience, whenever we’d run into each other at a PIUG meeting or trade show, I’d hear Richard’s hearty laugh from across the room and I felt that we were picking up where we had left off the last time we had seen each other as if no time had transpired in the interim. I will miss that laugh and I will sorely miss Richard. Jeff Forman E-mail address: [email protected]
Although I had only known Richard a little, from discussions at PIUG Conferences, the IFFI Players and as a referee, I also found him very friendly, helpful and knowledgeable, and I am more than happy to concur with all that has been written above. Michael Blackman Editor-in-Chief World Patent Information