Open Password – Freitag, den 17. Mai

#561

 

Ann Chapman – Information Professional des Jahres – Minesoft – Open Password – Erfolgsgeschichte – Christoph Aschoff – Peter Müller-Bader – Patentämter – Informationskonzerne – Patent Professionals – Minesoft – PatBase – IP Law Firm –  Patent Attorneys – Data Quality – Freedom-to-Operate Search – German Market – IP-Lifecycle – Questel – Orbit – Dialog – STN – GENIOS – GBI – User Feedback – Vertical Tool Modifications – PatKM – Competitive Intelligence – Integrated Workflow – Knowledge Management – Archiving – Early Warning System – Libraries – Historic Patents – Citation Explorer – Citation Tracker – Pat Docs – Chemical Explorer – Alerting – Legal Status Tracking – R&D – Litigation – C-suite – Internal and External Counsel – Opioid-Krise – Wolters Kluwer Health – Knowledge Unlatched – UL – Machine Risk Assessment – Recursion – Experimental Biology – Royal Society of Chemistry – Institut für Marktentwicklungen

Ann Chapman (Minesoft):

Information Professional
des Jahres 2018/2019
für ihre Lebensleistung

Striking the balance between
development cycles,
all the while listening to clients’ feedback

Expanding User Communities
Including C-Suite, R&D, Legal and
Legal Operations, Associated Counsel
and Business Unit Owners

Ann with husband and business partner Ophir Daniel and the office dog Lotte at the Minesoft Headquarter.

(Br) Ann Chapman wird von Open Password für ihre Lebensleistung als Information Professional des Jahres 2018/2019 ausgezeichnet – im Besonderen dafür,

• dass sie als eine der Pionierinnen die Online-Branche in jungen Jahren an verantwortlichen Stellen vorangebracht und einiges von der Begeisterung und dem Enthusiasmus, der seinerzeit unseren Wissenschafts- und Wirtschaftsbereich kennzeichnete, in die Gegenwart rettete;
• dass sie ihre persönliche, berufliche, wirtschaftliche und institutionelle Erfolgsgeschichte über die Jahrzehnte fortgeschrieben hat und eine der besten Beispiele dafür ist, dass nachhaltige Success Stories auch in unserer Branche nach wie vor möglich sind;
• dass sie mit der Gründung von Minesoft am Küchentisch am Punkt Null begann und im Vertrauen auf die eigene Kompetenz eine Risikobereitschaft zeigte, die sie zum Vorbild auch für die heutigen Start ups werden ließ;
• dass sie in den folgenden Phasen auf sich gestellt eine “Geschichte vom Schuhputzer zum Millionär” schrieb, wie wir sie aus Deutschland nur von den GBI-Gründern Christoph Aschoff und Peter Müller-Bader kennen, dies allerdings im persönlichen Stil mit einer größeren “britischen” sachbetonten Zurückhaltung und ohne einen erkennbaren Willen, irgendwann Kasse zu machen und das eigene Unternehmen an einen der Informationskonzerne zu verkaufen;
• dass sie sich weder von den Informationskonzernen noch von den freien Angeboten der Patentämter einschüchtern ließ, vielmehr Minesoft fest in seiner Marktnische etablierte und mit einer kontinuierlichen Kette an Innovationen, die an die Frühzeit der Online-Branche erinnert, den Sektor der Patentinformationen voranbrachte und die Informationsversorgung der Patent Professionals und des Managements in Patentfragen verbesserte – Muss uns erst ein britisches Unternehmen zeigen, wie wichtig der selbstständige Mittelstand auch in der Informationsbranche ist?;
• dass sie mit der überaus weitgehenden Orientierung von Minesoft an den Wünschen der Kunden und der Etablierung einer “offenen Kultur” unter den Beschäftigten auch zu einem Leitbild für Kundenbeziehungen und Personalpolitik wurde und
• dass man mit Ann Chapman immer über alles sprechen kann und dass für sie der “Blick über den Tellerrand” eine Selbstverständlichkeit war und geblieben ist.

Nachdem ich mittlerweile mehr als vierzig Jahre immer wieder eng mit Ann Chapman zusammengearbeitet habe, die Gespräche mit ihr immer genoss und sie mir immer wieder auf eine Weise half, die weit über das hinausging, was man hätte erwarten können, gilt ihr auch mein ganz persönlicher von Herzen kommender Dank.

Im Gespräch mit Open Password nimmt die Gründerin und Geschäftsführerin von Minesoft zu ihrem persönlichen Werdegang, zu der Entwicklung des Anbieters von Patentinformationslösungen und zur Lage der Information Professionals Stellung.

Part II

About the position of Minesoft and PatBase.

We are positioned firmly in the professional patent market. We work with the patent specialists in large companies across the world, helping their Legal Departments cope with the ever-increasing flood of information about innovation. As I noted, Minesoft works predominantly with the professional patent specialists around the world, with companies in very different industrial sectors as well as the Intellectual Property Law Firms and Patent Attorneys. This is a very large potential market and although you might talk about “rife” competition, in fact there are only a few players globally who work in the same field as Minesoft. There are a small handful of players in our precise niche and we work closely with our clients to develop bespoke services as well as providing products for general use in searching and displaying of patent documents. It is indeed a niche market, requiring huge databases that are built and improved upon over many years.  Our data is high quality, with the quality added inhouse, so we know about the barriers to entry to offer something similar!

PatBase is one of our solutions for searching and analysing patent data globally. It is a massive amount of data that needs to be sifted and sorted to carry out a high quality freedom-to-operate or similar search in the patent field – a pre-requisite for filing any patent application at any State Patent Office. Since we deal with companies filing in the fields of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering and electronics, we need solutions that allow searching across millions of patent documents, narrowing down to a manageable number to be viewed in detail. Bearing in mind patent documents can run to many pages in length and will always have technical drawings (that might also mean pages of chemical structures), we have developed systems and solutions designed to speed up the examination and review of documents on screen and off-screen.  A specialist patent search will involve checking the legal aspects of patents such as where in the world has it been filed, where is it currently valid, what exactly is the legal basis (claims) of the patent, distinguishing between the dependent and independent claims, translation between languages – because more patents are filed in other languages than English around the world as well as being able to see the drawings whenever necessary to which the text is referring. Original filed copies need to be available as well as the searchable full-text of the document. The patent family (a group of patent filings related to one invention) is critical in the equation of patent searching.  Any one of these areas is complex and requires a special suite of tools. PatBase has them available in one place and that is why it has become the “go to” place for search and examination of patents for many patent professionals.

_______________________________________________________________________

Germany with a big part in constructive discussions and beta tests.
________________________________________________________________________

How has your company incorporated latest technology to deliver better services to your clients? Who can benefit from your products and services? As the number of user types across the IP lifecycle has multiplied over the years, so has the need for flexibility of search and analytics platforms with respect to functionality and ease of use. In the past only the more specialised databases and access portals such as Questel, Orbit, Dialog or STN – or Genios and GBI in Germany – enabled sophisticated and well-trained users to manipulate input queries in the hope that they could then decipher the vast amount of data available.

Today, all manner of users want easy-to-query databases and the ability to seamlessly create everything from board level presentations to detailed invalidity reports. Search and analytics platforms need to allow users to quickly go from initial query to intelligent graphical output, just as easily as to create search results ready to submit to worldwide patent offices. We have worked to constantly innovate our platforms to allow professional searchers as well as business executives to quickly gain the ability to answer business critical questions in the timeliest manner. Search platforms should be built for users, by users, irrespective of what background these user communities have. Minesoft has tried to strike the balance between development cycles, all the while listening to clients’ feedback.  We have benefitted from great user feedback. And it is true to say that Germany has played a big part in this continual development and improvement of our products. We have a large German market and have had many constructive discussions and beta tests with our clients based there.

An example of the way we develop products is in vertical specific tool modification. For instance, Minesoft has developed tools for people in the biotech, chemical and life sciences area which range from the automation of text extraction and association, to the ability to easily draw chemical structures for search input. If our clients have ideas about how we can further help them, we will do so, even if the benefit is focused on a particular vertical market segment.

________________________________________________________________________

PatKM and Historic Patents: Customized Patent Knowledge Monitoring.

________________________________________________________________________

How does your customized patent knowledge management solution, Minesoft Pat-KM help companies with competitive intelligence monitoring to maintain their competitive edge in the market? Minesoft’s Pat-KM provides access to global patent data with integrated workflow for monitoring, classification and dissemination of relevant patent records. As a Knowledge Management system, it represents an evolution away from the usual one-size-fits-all solution towards a more bespoke approach that can adapt and change based on client needs and feedback to changing scenarios.

Pat-KM acts as comprehensive software solution overlay on the data available in PatBase, the web-based global patent database. Users benefit from access to the wide range of search and analysis tools available within the PatBase system, as well as the additional fields and rules set up for a personal archival KM system. Effective knowledge sharing is possible even with users that are outside the technical and legal sphere, such as section heads or company directors who can request a summary of the new information on a particular topic for review. For example, the CEO could choose to check certain documents, monitor a potential licensing opportunity and receive a selection of documents matched to their interests based on the human actions taken by Pat-KM users throughout the previous week, ensuring that all information that crosses their desk is relevant and important to business.

Minesoft Pat-KM was previously called Minesoft Patent Archive by us, when we developed our first patent archives with companies back in the day. We have been developing these systems for many years, before we designed and developed PatBase. We realized companies needed a way to archive their data – internal data as well as their own patent data – and it is advisable for many companies to maintain a watch on key technologies or competitors.  It can act as an early warning system for a corporation, especially in today’s world, where technological change is happening and being developed very quickly. I see it almost as a necessary service for companies. In addition to constant surveillance of a technological field, the Pat-KM product we develop offers the ability for data to be tagged and annotated by the experts within a company. This enables companies to develop their own powerful resource of inhouse expertise in a given field of importance to them. We found that very often, companies would lose specialist knowledge and insight when staff left or retired.

The Corporate Online Information industry grew out of the Corporate Library function. Libraries should be about preserving and archiving information for future use. It is easy to think that the patent data is online and can be replicated – but not if you lose the knowledge and insight that allowed the company to flourish in the first place.  I am personally attached to Minesoft Pat-KM as I think it offers a brilliant opportunity for the Patent and Legal Departments to showcase their talents to the corporation.

.

Ann poses for a picture with Gerold Frers of Siemens and Lee Smith of RWS at CPAC in Beijing.

Some chemical patents date back to even hundred years from now. How do you ensure all patents are incorporated in your patent database search results and their current legal status? We do have a great selection of historic patents in our database, including entire collections from their first published patent up to today.  Asking me this reminds me of books published by Steve van Dulken, who was an expert curator in patents at the British Library in London. He published titles such as “The American Dream” and “British Patents of Inventions 1617-1977”, covering a selection of then ground breaking or interesting patents from the past few centuries. Looking at older technology gives rise to new solutions and new interpretations, while exploring patent citations is an ideal way to chart the development of a field of technology. Hence Minesoft offers software tools such as “Citation Explorer” and “Citation Tracker” and will soon add CitationWeb.  PatBase can be used for historic patents, as can Minesoft PatDocs and Chemical Explorer collections.  The collections are datamined for completeness as there can be missing patents in data transfers or indeed in national collections. This leads back to the quality issues I mentioned earlier. Patents have a limited validity lifespan of 20 years approximately, after which the idea is available for use generally. For instance, once a drug is off patent, you will see generic versions appearing rapidly where there is high demand.  This is another reason why companies want to monitor Legal Status of patents, so they know exactly what stage a patent of interest is at and when they can start to use the technology therein. Our tracking products for Patent Registers and Legal Status are ideal for efficient monitoring tasks and the real-time legal status module we have programmed is very popular.

________________________________________________________________________

Countering the Increasing Litigious Nature of Patent Holders.
________________________________________________________________________

Please elaborate on the features you are providing in your ‘off the shelf’ product segment for customers. What specific needs of customers do you address through this? Minesoft develops a range of products that can deliver different kinds of patent intelligence. We began in search technology but rapidly moved into the Alerting business. One of our first products was in the field of Legal Status Tracking of patent documents. This was a tiresome task back in the day, like looking for a needle in a haystack, but the person looking needed to be a patent specialist. We know we managed to save people many hours of time checking meticulously through patent registers!

Certainly, one need for patent information is in the research and development (R&D) community to access freedom to operate or otherwise stated as patent infringement risk mitigation. R&D groups also need to understand technology shifts to better direct funding and ensure they stay on top of the global trends, assessing emerging entrants and threats, or reducing expenditure waste through duplicative efforts and competitive landscaping. Patent data is critical for R&D to make buy vs build decisions.

With the increasing litigious nature of patent holders across the globe, patent information is now a critical data component to address in the boardroom and so Minesoft User Communities nowadays include the C-suite, R&D engineers and executives, legal and legal operations, associated internal and external counsel and business unit owners. In fact, organisations employing best practices for patent review committees typically now have members of marketing, sales and finance sitting in to digest critical business decisions surrounding patenting. At Minesoft we try to help all these users make sense out of the mounds of data.

Please read in the next part of the interview with Ann Chapman: One of the highest client retention rates by unlimited customer service – Adding an enhancement requested by a customer

 

Gegen die Überwältigung
in der Opioid-Krise

To help its customers comply with the latest regulations, Wolters Kluwer Health is launching a comprehensive toolkit for opioid taskforces in healthcare systems and pharmacy chains to address clinical variability in opioid-related pain therapy care and stem the tide of the opioid epidemic. ​

Auswahl zwischen 17 förderungswürdigen Bibliotheken. Knowledge Unlatched launches its sixth funding round. Libraries worldwide can support 17 projects across many scientific disciplines by pledging within the central Knowledge Unlatched marketplace. The projects have been assessed and selected by librarians. This year’s offering consists of Open Access books, journals and services from a variety of partners, all of which should be made freely accessible to users all over the world upon completion of the funding process.

Bessere Risikoabschätzung in industrieller Produktion.  UL announces the launch of Machine Risk Assessment services designed to help factory owners, asset owners, and employers mitigate risk within the industrial workplace and provide a safer work environment. UL’s Machine Risk Assessment services provide an unbiased assessment of the safety of industrial manufacturing machinery. The services are based on OSHA, ANSI B11, ISO 12100, NFPA, RIA, and other applicable standards.

Datensätze für Algorithmen in experimenteller Biologie.  Recursion announced it will open-source a glimpse of the massive biological dataset the company has been building for more than five years. At more than two petabytes, and across more than 10 million different biological contexts, Recursion’s data is the world’s largest image-based dataset designed specifically for the development of machine learning algorithms in experimental biology and drug development.

Autorenhilfen vom Schreiben bis zur Vermarktung. The Royal Society of Chemistry has launched a new platform designed to assist both authors and reviewers who are submitting to, or providing reviews for, its journals. The new hub includes resources for authors covering everything from writing and formatting articles to promoting work on social media and in the press after publication. It also includes a comprehensive ‘How to publish’ guide.

Gesellschaftlicher Nutzen und wirtschaftlicher Erfolg finden zusammen. Die CEOs von Unternehmen weltweit setzen nach Ansicht der Top-Talente von morgen die falschen Prioritäten: Nur Unternehmen, die einen gesellschaftlichen Nutzen vermitteln, werden zukünftig im Wettbewerb bestehen können. Das ist ein Ergebnis der aktuellen Studie „Voices of the Leaders of Tomorrow 2019 – Purpose beyond Profit“ des Nürnberg Instituts für Marktentscheidungen (früher GfK) und des St. Gallen Symposiums. Für die Studie wurden über 1.000 junge Top-Talente aus mehr als 80 Ländern befragt.

Quelle: Outsell – Insitut für Marktentscheidungen

Anzeige

FAQ + Hilfe