Digest III - July 2016

The big news of the month arrived with confirmation that Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia had agreed to purchase Thomson Reuters IP & Science business and I can definitely say this is not one of the options anyone I spoke to considered!   The commercial / professional information industry has been somewhat stalled of late, pending this decision, so it’ll be interesting to watch the changes unfurl, and to find out what the vision of the new owners will be for this diverse portfolio spanning IP, life sciences but also scientific and social sciences information tools.    TR products included in the sale are Web of Science, Thomson CompuMark, Thomson Innovation, MarkMonitor, Thomson Reuters Cortellis and Thomson IP Manager.

In June a couple of new IP management tools were announced, this is definitely a growth area at the moment as those in the IP services business are looking at providing tools to industry which cover the complete technology innovation lifecycle.

Closer to home Extract Information successfully co-hosted, with PSIM, the 1st Cambridge Information and Intellectual Property Meeting. This new meeting gathered together technologists, legal professionals and information and IP analysts, and several information industry companies attended as exhibitors - Aistemos, CAS and Minesoft, and Linguamatics, who attended.

The 2nd CIIPM is planned for 5th July 2017.

Arts, Humanities, Music literature

Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) publishes the RILM abstracts, a comprehensive international bibliography of writings on music covering publications from the early 19th century to the present. This rich resource is now available for search on EBSCO

IP office news on documentation, legislation and other factors of interest to information users.

The IP5 The 9th Meeting of the IP5 Heads of Office was held in Japan, the meeting was chaired by Hitoshi Ito, Commissioner of the Japan Patent Office (JPO). At the meeting, the heads of the Offices listened to the achievements of the IP5 cooperation over the past year, and approved projects such as the Global Dossier, patent information dissemination policy, and common patent prosecution highway (PPH). SIPO signed a cooperation agreement on IP with the Republic of Uzbekistan. SIPO will be classifying all patent applications from all technologies using the EPO’s detailed CPC, as well as WIPO’s IPC, in all technologies.

In the Antipodies; New Zealand is proposing to introduce a Register of Geographical Indications. Geographical Indications help to protect consumer products from particular areas which are recognised for quality. Exports of New Zealand wines, particularly that Sauvignon Blanc, so popular in London right now, are booming, and this move aims to assist the industry further in new markets, such as China. For more on Geographical Indications, see: http://www.wipo.int/geo_indications/en/

In Asia; teaching IP to young people is one area where China is definitely leading, and this month a new programme for STEM postgraduate students was initiated at Wuhan Institute of Technology in Hubei province. It covered IP, innovation and entrepreneurship topics such as IP strategies, patenting systems and patent drafting skills.  SIPO renewed its commitment to using the CPC patent classification. SIPO has committed to classifying all invention patent applications in every technology field using CPC, and to share the relevant classification data with the EPO. The EPO provides training and assistance. The CPC or Cooperative Patent Classification Scheme is in use by an increasing number of offices worldwide, as it allows more sophisticated search and better allocation of new patent applications for examination purposes.   Contentious IP matters in China the SIPO department in charge of patent administration must conclude patent disputes mediation within two months, or drop the case.   However, if a case is very complex the mediation period may be extended to three months.   Three courts in China, Beijing, Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province met to discuss closer cooperation, and agreed that intellectual property (IP) cases in the region should be dealt with mainly in Beijing.

In Europe; a conference in Munich discussed the implications for the forthcoming Unitary patent, and Unitary patent courts, post Brexit vote in the UK. Whilst exiting the EU would mean the UK could not participate in the UPC, as currently enabled, but it has no effect on the UK’s membership of the European Patent Organisation. See the editorial written by Jane in last quarter’s edition of World Patent Information for an overview of the UP and UPC.  The UPC (Unitary Patent Court) got two steps nearer in June as Germany and The Netherlands moved towards ratification. It remains to be seen what will happen post –Brexit wrt. the UK and the Unitary patent.

Software for Invention harvesting, IP management, IP strategy

Aistemos hosted a roundtable discussion on the changing role of IP and IP Strategy, illustrating how access to data helps companies to maximise the value and reach of their own IP, but highlighted the necessity for IP professionals to breach the language gap and learn how to communicate with business leaders. They also conducted a survey, which showed that IP is associated with negatives - risk and cost, rather than in as a positive asset. A summary can be found here: http://blog.aistemos.com/2016/07/ip-strategy-in-boardroom-around.html

IdeaScout, software to assist with very early stage of the innovation lifecycle - harvesting and measuring, is being beta-tested by Innography, and was evaluated by Outsell, the information industry market research company, last month. Innography is now owned by CPAGlobal.   Another company highlighted in the Outsell report was AULIVE. Aulive, a Belgian company also provides software and training in the innovation and IP management space.

Thomson IP Manager Core Solutions has been adapted for smaller companies. The software offers the usual collection of IP management modules, with IP rules look up, and communication options to assist companies with innovation lifecycle management tasks.

Other software;
IBM announced ‘Watson Conversation’.   Watson Conversation Service aims to help developers to build and train a bot – a bot can control a device by voice. An easy to use interface for configuring the bot without any knowledge of coding or machine learning is now available on IBM Bluemix and the bot can be built for use in social media, Slack, SMS, on mobile, on websites, on robots.

Commercial information, publishing and IP services company news.

Financial news.

RELX – owner of Elsevier and LexisNexis, announced interim results for 2016 with revenue of £3,257m/€4,169m; and underlying growth of 4%.

Services, Sales

NACE International, a membership organisation in the Corrosion prevention business, and a publisher of Material Performance and CORROSION journals, has engaged Publisher Promotion & Fulfillment (PPF), a division of EBSCO Information Services to provide subscription services on its behalf. PPF will provide subscription management services which include fulfilment, renewals, customer services and reporting.