- Email: [email protected]
Summary of articles: Other information
World Patent Information 28 (2006) 294–295 www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
Editorial
Summary of articles: Other information
As part of our continuing series of guest editorials, Edlyn Simmons, the IPI Award winner in 2005, explores the relationship between the 16th Century Gresham’s Law on currency and the economics of the provision of patent information. Main articles Although we have all heard snippets of information about Open Patent Services, clear information about what they are, their benefits and limitations, and future possibilities, has been quite limited. In his article here, Peter Kallas tackles this significant information gap. In presenting an academic response and an economic approach to the European Commission’s Questionnaire on the Patent System in Europe, Franc¸ois Le´veˆqueand Yann Me´nie`re emphasise that the goal should be more focused on the promotion of innovation, on assisting SMEs and on using translation fees and patent costs as policy levers. In the field of macroanalysis and visualisation (A/V) of, primarily, patent search results, Gerhard Fischer and Nicolas Lalyre point out the potential advantage of a hostbased A/V system. They then describe the main features of the first such system, STNÒAnaVistTM, and suggest some desirable future developments of the software. As part of our occasional series of articles on patent and trademark information user groups, Bob Appleton, John Bullen, Neil Walden, and Jeanette Eldridge have provided a detailed profile of the UK based TSUG (Thomson Scientific User Group). In an article by Mr. Hisamitsu Arai, he explains Japan’s improved IP strategy which has followed from a major speech by the Japanese Prime Minister in 2002. The aim is to benefit the Japanese economy by increased creativity, protection and use of IP in every sector, especially in universities and through technology transfer. The active field of innovation in Israel, and the way that this may be monitored, along with ways of retrieving corresponding patent information, are described in an article by Shoshana Kessel.
0172-2190/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2006.07.008
As part of our coverage of important patent and inventor anniversaries falling in 2006, we have an article from Brian Spear featuring J.J. Thomson, the 1906 Nobel Prize winner for Physics, and the part that Thomson and his contemporaries played in the discovery of the electron and the birth of electronics. In a further article, I have also collected together information from various sources on other significant anniversaries in 2006, from papermaking (1806) to aircraft navigation (1956). Personal We also include an appreciation of a colleague, and author for this journal, who has passed away, Ferdinand De Laet. He had worked extensively as a Technical Advisor in Africa, especially for ARIPO in Zimbabwe. He was remarkable not only for his contributions in that sphere, but also for having reached the age of 80, still in post and still enthusiastic. Perhaps his life history is an object lesson, or a warning?, to all of us! On a more cheerful note, we include a report on Pierre Buffet’s receipt of the IPI Award for 2006, reviewing his extensive contributions to the advance of patent information over many years. Conferences I attended the fine PIUG Conference in Minneapolis this year. As anticipated, it was both informative and enjoyable. I was also able to talk with many authors, and potential authors. A particularly wide range of topics were presented, and my report in this issue gives more detail. It was no surprise that there was much interest in various initiatives from the USPTO. What was slightly surprising, and encouraging, was that the IPC Reform did not loom so large, either in material presented or in conversations with other delegates, as in other recent conferences. Hopefully, despite implementation delays and uncertainties, this indicates that it is becoming just another improved version of a well known tool in the patent searcher’s armoury.
Editorial / World Patent Information 28 (2006) 294–295
David Newton attended the PATLIB Conference, organised by the EPO and the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic in Prague: his conference report is included in this issue. It was a particularly good PATLIB conference with a broad spectrum of subjects, including significant policy issues relating to the future role of the EPO and the member states in providing the best service to European industry, and an IPR Initiative from the European Commission. Editorial Advisory Board We are pleased to welcome three new Board members, John LeGuyader, Mrs. We´re´ Re´gine Gazaro, and Sara Davis. John LeGuyader works at the USPTO. His career has been in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical areas, initially as a patent examiner and now as a Group Director. He has recently also been the Executive Assistant to the Commissioner for Patents where he served as the Commissioner’s chief advisor. He has led a number of Trilateral efforts on classification harmonization and exchange of information for prior art searching among the EPO, JPO and USPTO. He has also been involved in the competitive sourcing of some of the USPTO’s PCT work and in centralizing search guidance information for both the examiners and the public in all technology areas. Mrs. We´re´ Re´gine Gazaro works at the Organisation Africaine de la Proprie´te´ Intellectuelle (OAPI). Born in Togo, she worked there successively in the control of quality in the food sector, as Secretary General of the Fight Against Hunger, at the Ministry of Social Welfare and Human Rights and as a technical adviser of the Ministry of Agriculture. Since 1995 she has been working at OAPI in Yaounde, Cameroon as a patents examiner, as Head of Patents Service, and as the person responsible for the implementation of the system of plant variety protection at OAPI. Sara Davis works at GlaxoSmithKline at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, USA and is currently Information Man-
295
ager, Intellectual Property in the Corporate Intellectual Property department. There she does information work for patent attorneys, coordinates printed and electronic information resources for patent and trademark attorneys and is involved in maintaining the department web site on the corporate intranet. Prior to her present position, which she has held for sixteen years, she supervised a unit which provided scientific information services to R&D scientists and patent attorneys. She has twenty nine years’ experience in patent information and has been in the pharmaceutical industry for more than thirty years. Board member Nancy Lambert is retiring from Chevron Corporation, but will continue with patent information on a consultancy basis. We wish her well in her partial retirement and are glad that she will continue to contribute her extensive experience and knowledge on the Board. And congratulations to Board member Prabuddha Ganguli on his appointment by the Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India, as a member of the Working Group ( under the Steering Committee on S&T for the formulation of the XIth National Five Year Plan) on Policies, Administrative Changes for Improvement in S&T research Environment and Resources. Future Articles Amongst the many articles submitted recently and now passing through the referee review and editorial stages, subjects covered include: the ramifications of the reformed IPC in the search process, subject analysis and patent search strategies, and an analysis of Avian Influenza from the European Patent Database. Michael Blackman Editor-in-Chief 45 Kenwood Drive, Beckenham, Kent BR3 6QY, UK Tel.: +44 208 658 0637 E-mail address: [email protected]
Editorial
Summary of articles: Other information
As part of our continuing series of guest editorials, Edlyn Simmons, the IPI Award winner in 2005, explores the relationship between the 16th Century Gresham’s Law on currency and the economics of the provision of patent information. Main articles Although we have all heard snippets of information about Open Patent Services, clear information about what they are, their benefits and limitations, and future possibilities, has been quite limited. In his article here, Peter Kallas tackles this significant information gap. In presenting an academic response and an economic approach to the European Commission’s Questionnaire on the Patent System in Europe, Franc¸ois Le´veˆqueand Yann Me´nie`re emphasise that the goal should be more focused on the promotion of innovation, on assisting SMEs and on using translation fees and patent costs as policy levers. In the field of macroanalysis and visualisation (A/V) of, primarily, patent search results, Gerhard Fischer and Nicolas Lalyre point out the potential advantage of a hostbased A/V system. They then describe the main features of the first such system, STNÒAnaVistTM, and suggest some desirable future developments of the software. As part of our occasional series of articles on patent and trademark information user groups, Bob Appleton, John Bullen, Neil Walden, and Jeanette Eldridge have provided a detailed profile of the UK based TSUG (Thomson Scientific User Group). In an article by Mr. Hisamitsu Arai, he explains Japan’s improved IP strategy which has followed from a major speech by the Japanese Prime Minister in 2002. The aim is to benefit the Japanese economy by increased creativity, protection and use of IP in every sector, especially in universities and through technology transfer. The active field of innovation in Israel, and the way that this may be monitored, along with ways of retrieving corresponding patent information, are described in an article by Shoshana Kessel.
0172-2190/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2006.07.008
As part of our coverage of important patent and inventor anniversaries falling in 2006, we have an article from Brian Spear featuring J.J. Thomson, the 1906 Nobel Prize winner for Physics, and the part that Thomson and his contemporaries played in the discovery of the electron and the birth of electronics. In a further article, I have also collected together information from various sources on other significant anniversaries in 2006, from papermaking (1806) to aircraft navigation (1956). Personal We also include an appreciation of a colleague, and author for this journal, who has passed away, Ferdinand De Laet. He had worked extensively as a Technical Advisor in Africa, especially for ARIPO in Zimbabwe. He was remarkable not only for his contributions in that sphere, but also for having reached the age of 80, still in post and still enthusiastic. Perhaps his life history is an object lesson, or a warning?, to all of us! On a more cheerful note, we include a report on Pierre Buffet’s receipt of the IPI Award for 2006, reviewing his extensive contributions to the advance of patent information over many years. Conferences I attended the fine PIUG Conference in Minneapolis this year. As anticipated, it was both informative and enjoyable. I was also able to talk with many authors, and potential authors. A particularly wide range of topics were presented, and my report in this issue gives more detail. It was no surprise that there was much interest in various initiatives from the USPTO. What was slightly surprising, and encouraging, was that the IPC Reform did not loom so large, either in material presented or in conversations with other delegates, as in other recent conferences. Hopefully, despite implementation delays and uncertainties, this indicates that it is becoming just another improved version of a well known tool in the patent searcher’s armoury.
Editorial / World Patent Information 28 (2006) 294–295
David Newton attended the PATLIB Conference, organised by the EPO and the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic in Prague: his conference report is included in this issue. It was a particularly good PATLIB conference with a broad spectrum of subjects, including significant policy issues relating to the future role of the EPO and the member states in providing the best service to European industry, and an IPR Initiative from the European Commission. Editorial Advisory Board We are pleased to welcome three new Board members, John LeGuyader, Mrs. We´re´ Re´gine Gazaro, and Sara Davis. John LeGuyader works at the USPTO. His career has been in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical areas, initially as a patent examiner and now as a Group Director. He has recently also been the Executive Assistant to the Commissioner for Patents where he served as the Commissioner’s chief advisor. He has led a number of Trilateral efforts on classification harmonization and exchange of information for prior art searching among the EPO, JPO and USPTO. He has also been involved in the competitive sourcing of some of the USPTO’s PCT work and in centralizing search guidance information for both the examiners and the public in all technology areas. Mrs. We´re´ Re´gine Gazaro works at the Organisation Africaine de la Proprie´te´ Intellectuelle (OAPI). Born in Togo, she worked there successively in the control of quality in the food sector, as Secretary General of the Fight Against Hunger, at the Ministry of Social Welfare and Human Rights and as a technical adviser of the Ministry of Agriculture. Since 1995 she has been working at OAPI in Yaounde, Cameroon as a patents examiner, as Head of Patents Service, and as the person responsible for the implementation of the system of plant variety protection at OAPI. Sara Davis works at GlaxoSmithKline at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, USA and is currently Information Man-
295
ager, Intellectual Property in the Corporate Intellectual Property department. There she does information work for patent attorneys, coordinates printed and electronic information resources for patent and trademark attorneys and is involved in maintaining the department web site on the corporate intranet. Prior to her present position, which she has held for sixteen years, she supervised a unit which provided scientific information services to R&D scientists and patent attorneys. She has twenty nine years’ experience in patent information and has been in the pharmaceutical industry for more than thirty years. Board member Nancy Lambert is retiring from Chevron Corporation, but will continue with patent information on a consultancy basis. We wish her well in her partial retirement and are glad that she will continue to contribute her extensive experience and knowledge on the Board. And congratulations to Board member Prabuddha Ganguli on his appointment by the Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India, as a member of the Working Group ( under the Steering Committee on S&T for the formulation of the XIth National Five Year Plan) on Policies, Administrative Changes for Improvement in S&T research Environment and Resources. Future Articles Amongst the many articles submitted recently and now passing through the referee review and editorial stages, subjects covered include: the ramifications of the reformed IPC in the search process, subject analysis and patent search strategies, and an analysis of Avian Influenza from the European Patent Database. Michael Blackman Editor-in-Chief 45 Kenwood Drive, Beckenham, Kent BR3 6QY, UK Tel.: +44 208 658 0637 E-mail address: [email protected]