Pergamon

Literature Review

These abstracts were kindly provided by WIPO.

Automated Patent Searching in the EPO: From Online Searching to Document Delivery, A. Nuyts, C. Jonckheere, D. I. Raitt, Ed. and B. Jeapes, Ed., Online Information 96 Proceedings, 20th International Online Information Meeting, Learned Inf. (Europe), XVIII + 487 pp., 225-230, 1996. The European Patent Office (EPO) has recently implemented the last part of its ambitious automation project aimed at creating an automated search environment for approximately 1200 EPO patent search examiners. The examiners now have at their disposal an integrated set of tools offering a full range of functionalities from online searching, via full-text browsing, to document delivery on the workstation screen or a nearby departmental printer. Online searching, via a common command language, is carried out in a great number of bibliographic and full-text databases on the EPO in-house host service or in commercial databases (on STN, Dialog, Questel, etc.). Specially developed “dual-mode” viewer software enables the examiner easily to browse full- text docu-ments (in character mode) and view patent images (in facsimile mode). Browsing and viewing, as online searching, are interactive operations with very short response times. The recently installed electronic document server finally gives access to the EPO’s complete search collection comprising some 25 million documents (250 million pages compressed according to CCI’IT group 4, T6), totalling approximately 14 terabytes of storage space. The storage technology is based on the use of magnetic cartridges placed in robots, which offer not an interactive online service but rather a “near-line” service with maximum 15 minutes response time.

How a US Patent Protects You, and Does Your Project Qualify for a US Patent? C. T. Kawai, IEEE Technical Applications Conference, Northcon/96, Conference Record (Cat. No. 96CH35928) IEEE, VIII + 444 pp., 432-434, 1996. Patents can be invaluable to inventors not only as a way to protect their inventions but also as a commodity (i.e., property) to be bought,

World Patent hfimmrtion, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 239-240, 1997

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sold and licensed. As the global market place continues to shrink and information becomes increasingly easier to acquire, inventors will find it more and more important to protect their intellectual property. Because of the unique rules that govern patents, however, it is important that inventors have at least a basic understanding of how patents are obtained, how the filing of a patent application can be barred by waiting too long, and, of course, whether their invention may be patentable.

Online Sources for Competitor Information, A. Weiss, D. I. Raitt, Ed. and B. Jeapes, Ed., Online Information 96 Proceedings, 20th International Online Information Meeting, Learned Inf. (Europe), XVIII + 487 pp., 391-396, 1996. Competitor information gathering is a key aspect of business planning. Information will come either from published or unpublished sources. Unpublished information will often be verified based on material from published sources. Published information is more likely to be factual and includes financial, stock market, press, market and industry, product, trademark and patent sources. Much published information is now available online but the specific skills of a dedicated competitor analyst are required to best utilize these information sources. The traditional online hosts such as FT Profile, Maid, Data-Star and Dialog each hosts databases that can be used to obtain competitor intelligence. Typical databases will include those from Dun and Bradstreet, Reuters Textline, the Derwent World Patents Index, Kompass, Investext and others. The Internet has recently become an important source for competitor inform- ation, holding competitor promotional material as well as items from independent sources. The Internet search engines such as Digital’s Alta Vista can locate inform- ation of interest on both the World Wide Web and Usenet.

Managing Perceptions about Internet Electronic Commerce Security, C. W. Wood, Corn-Sac Comput. Secur. Audit. Controls (USA), 24( I), Management Advisory Publications, 10-12, 1997. A survey of 325 American companies, conducted by the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS), reported 32 cases of intellectual property theft per month in 1995. This represents a three-fold increase of the rate found in 1992. This rapid increase in information security problems parallels the rapid increase in the

interconnection of computers. This increase in security problems is also made worse by the fashionable openness brought to many of the new networks such as the Internet. If your organisation has not initiated a focused Internet security project, now is the time to get underway.

Corporate Information Protection Program: Concept of Operations, L. Sutterfield and T. Schell, Comput. Secur. J. (USA), 13(l), Comput. Security Inst., 31-38, Spring 1997. The security of information and information systems is a problem. The national security community has recognised the problem for years but recent moderate improvements in the protection of information have only addressed the tip of the “infoberg”. Business is also seeing the light. Hence, a burgeoning security products industry is unfolding. Most organisations are finding that what they need is a method to organise information security on an enterprise level. There are plenty of security products available and many more to come. How does one use these products effectively on a corporate-wide scale? The article attempts to answer that question by outlining a concept of operations for what is termed the Corporate Information Protection Program (CIPP). The CIPP is an organisational, functional and technical structure based on the application of statistical process control theory and methods to the problem of large-scale information protection management. The CIPP is founded on the view of information protection as an operational problem, not a regulatory issue. Stacks of regulations do not make for secure systems. Policy must be translated directly to the technical ability to control access to and the use of corporate information. The CIPP offers a cost- effective way to characterise and quantify security posture in business terms and incrementally improve security posture over time. The function of the CIPP is to provide near real time corporate risk management.

Intellectual Property Rights, V. Irish, IEE Colloquium on Principles of Law for Engineers and Managers (Digest No. 1996/269), IEE, 54 pp., 1-3, 1996. The benefit of innovation to the national economy is recognised in a special area of law known as intellectual property rights. These legal rights allow people who have good ideas to stop others from stealing them; the ideas can vary from an improvement to an engineering design or a manufacturing process, to a memorable

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