Monday 25 Oct

This presentation discusses the use of machine learning and reading techniques, ontology and thesaurus development in order to produce scientific databases. Using these techniques to augment and reduce the use of traditional handcrafted data curation we expect to extend and deepen coverage.
  Specific emphasis is given to the development of tools to identify chemically relevant journal articles, tagging and indexing of biological data, and chemical data and structure identification and excerption from patents. We discuss changes to the journal submission workflow in order to accelerate the semantic tagging of articles. Examples are taken from Elsevier's on-going excerption-tool, ontology and thesaurus development for Reaxys, PharmaPendium, and Embase.
  These techniques are the future of sustainable database creation; however they are not fully operational today. We also discuss the still significant problems to be addressed before fully automated tools may be used to create and curate scientific databases and completely replace current human excerption methods.

Patent trends seen in the last years comprise higher activities of applicants from BRIC countries, low level of requirements for filing a patent application and even for the grant of a patent, as well as  increasing  claim and publication fees of the patent offices. All these trends lead to an increase of the number of active patent cases, covering a specific technology, and thus to more patent searches and an increasing number of conflicts between applicants.
   Companies, as well s patent offices, have an increasing demand for sophisticated tools for patent and literature searching as well as for the services themselves. To help the patent system to survive, a quality offensive is needed. This can only be done by the large patent offices, even if it makes them less profitable.

Patents are an intangible asset which is growing in importance. Corresponding information services are now going beyond the sole patent information experts to reach players in several departments in the company such as R&D, legal and strategy/finance. In parallel, emerging economies, especially in Asia, mean new sources of information in different languages. Lastly, the Internet is introducing new paradigms, which impact user behaviour. The traditional approach of database producer / online vendor / tool provider needs to be revisited in order to better map the different categories of users, of data and of tools.

Different approaches to innovation benchmarking and their strengths and weaknesses

• Review of patent data-based innovation benchmarks published in the media
• The Patent Asset Index
• Outlook

 Chemical formulations are combinations of active ingredients (AI) with inert formulation components improving the properties of AI with regards to effectiveness, application, safety, and storage. Chemical products, e.g. pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals or cosmetics, are usually brought to market as formulations, which are therefore well represented in chemical companies’ product pipelines. In this context, search and analysis of chemical formulations in patent information are highly business-critical, since they build the basis for effective reinforcement of patent protection, avoidance of infringement, and competitive analysis. 
   Searches related to chemical formulations are characterised by a high complexity and diversity of the subject matter to be analysed, requiring tailor-made search strategies for (a) pure combinations of AI and formulation components and (b) innovative dosage forms. 
   The presentation provides best practice strategies for search, retrieval and analysis of chemical formulations both in patent- and non-patent literature. Furthermore, the value of retrieval from both classical online hosts and free databases on the web will be discussed. 

Chemical information mining has turned into a well-established scientific area over the last five years. Several software solutions exist that are able to identify and extract names of chemical compounds in text documents and convert them into chemical structure-searchable information. However, a still unsolved issue is the automatic abstraction of generic compounds (Markush structures). These usually consist of a core structure image and variable groups specified in the text, in additional images or in tables.
   This presentation describes our approach to extract generic structure information from documents by using a hybrid approach combining information science, cheminformatics, computational linguistics and pattern recognition techniques. The development of chemical ontologies and their usage is discussed; experiences with the envisaged methodology and first results are presented.
   This research project is funded by the German Ministry of Economics and Technology. It is part of the THESEUS research programme with the goal of developing a new Internet-based infrastructure in order to make better use of the knowledge available on the Internet.

A cheminformatics application, called MarVis (Markush Visualization), has been developed for patent Markush structure visualisation and analysis. MarVis was developed based on algorithms to represent and enumerate Markush structures in a commonly adapted chemistry structure format. MarVis is able to read patent Markush structural data and generates a report of the Markush core and R groups in a tabular format. To zoom into a particular region of interest in the chemical space, users can choose fragments from different (nested) R groups. MarVis will apply the selections and display the core with the expanded region of interest.

Most industrialised nations are aware of the "India brand". In the software sector since the late eighties. India became synonymous with the term outsourcing. Inspired by this business model, pharmaceutical and biotech companies began outsourcing their R & D work to India, starting from the mid-nineties. The reasons for this are the lower production costs and young talented labour pool in abundance. Recently, India has emerged as a preferred global destination for data extraction, information search and compilation services. The driving force of this outsourcing is the exponential growth of primary literature -- patents and journal articles, during the last two decades. Scientists, engineers and patent professionals need condensed information –- the granulated, ready to refer literature and not the entire chunk. The knowledge processing companies, in their initial years witnessed their own trepidation on quality and delivery. These issues seem trivial in the current scenario due to the enhanced information exchange and the increasing numbers of trained professionals. These professionals are specifically trained to meet the project requirements and the client expectations. The paradox in marketing informatics services is that the quality of the service could be judged after the service is used. This challenge makes the marketing of these services both different and more difficult than marketing of products. The opportunities, challenges and potential risks that the knowledge processing companies might encounter are addressed in this presentation that also encompasses the various outsourcing models and their location selection criteria.

India with its large English speaking talent pool and also experience with the outsourcing industry offers an attractive destination for the outsourcing of IP services. The outsourcing industry for IP services has evolved over the last decade in India. Starting from simple patent drafting and docketing to searches and complex high end work like patent valuations. The current list of outsourced IP services covers the complete spectrum of IP value chain. Still there is a difference between who is outsourcing what kind of services, and where. Cost no longer seems to be the only factor and requestors are looking for value, quality with minimum risk and innovations.
   We present the evolution of the IP outsourcing industry in India: describe the landscape of players in the fields, the drivers, the key challenges, with a special focus on outsourced searches and information retrieval. We also elaborate on the success stories and the failures: what has worked and how, and what has clearly not worked in this industry in the past. We also present the analysis on various industry segments: law firms, corporate, hi-tech and pharmaceuticals, and dissect the IP services that are most amenable to outsourcing in each segment.

Visit to the Austrian National Library and Conference Cocktail - sponsored by Questel