Mr. Harry
Allcock IPI Award Recipient 2007
Mr. Harry Allcock, Vice President of IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, is being honored as the recipient of the International Patent Information IPI-Award 2007.
The news was announced to over 340 information professionals attending the International Patent Information Conference & Exposition, IPI-ConfEx 2007, in Sorrento, Southern Italy on March 5th.
The announcement was opened by Mr. Ford Khorsandian, founder of the IPI-Award, as he introduced the eminent International Selection Board members present: Mr. Koh Ishii, Mrs. Minoo Philipp, Mr. Aalt van de Kuilen, and IPI-Award Board Chairman, Dr. Ian Sinclair. Those not able to be present, but who sent their congratulations and best wishes, were Dr. Patricia Dedert, Ms. Suzanne Robins, Ms. Edlyn Simmons and Mr. Roy Zimmerman.
Following an introduction by Ford Khorsandian on behalf of Award sponsors Technology & Patent Research (TPR) International, the name of the recipient for 2007 was announced by Dr. Ian Sinclair and the other Board members. They paid tribute to Mr. Allcock for his long career devoted to patent information. They noted his early foresight in making patent information available in computer searchable form, as well as his vibrant pioneering spirit, responsible for the strides in patent information made early on and in subsequent years. The Board concluded by saying that: "This is someone whose leadership combines talents for business, product development and customer service, an individual renowned for energy, enthusiasm, customer focus and commitment to producing quality patent information products."
The audience enthusiastically greeted the announcement with applause in recognition of a pioneer of patent information who has shaped the industry as we know it today.
Click here
for a full transcript of the announcement made at the International Patent
Information Conference & Exposition, IPI-ConfEx 2007, Sorrento, Italy, on
March 5th 2007. Includes
biographical highlights of Mr. Allcocks career.
Click here
for a full transcript of IPI-Award Evening Presentation Ceremony on May 7th
2007 at the Hilton Costa Mesa, California.
Includes full transcripts of the ceremony and Mr. Allcocks acceptance
speech, plus messages of congratulations from patent offices and user groups.
Click here for Photo Gallery of
the IPI-Award 2007 Presentation Ceremony held May 7th 2007 at the
Hilton Costa Mesa, California.
A Pioneer of the Patent
Information Industry
Harry Allcock gained a B.A. in Business Administration from George Washington University. He joined the fledgling Information for Industry, IFI organization in 1961 to market one of the few commercially available patent information tools, a dual dictionary of index terms for United States patents. Over more than 40 years, Mr. Allcock built his own companys databases and the patent information community from infancy to adulthood.
Early on, Mr. Allcock began to involve customers in building an up-to-date service to enhance access to patent information. When IFI Uniterm Index subscribers suggested enhancements for the service, he worked with them, first to convert the paper index into a retrieval system that ran on mainframe computers, and then to integrate DuPonts more sophisticated indexing and retrieval system into a second level U.S. patent retrieval service, the IFI Comprehensive Data Base. When online database services began offering time-shared database access, the stripped down IFI Biblio/Abstract database was one of the first offerings of the Dialog service. He acquired the first patent citation database and offered it on Dialog many years before other patent citation files were available. Using input from subscribers, he took suggestions for improvements to the original CLAIMS Reassignment/Reexamination, building it into the IFI Current Legal Status database, which is still one of the most complete sources of U.S. patent legal status information available.
Beyond building the IFI CLAIMS family of databases, Mr. Allcock was instrumental in building a community of U.S. patent information scientists. Biannual Harrys parties at the American Chemical Society national meetings offered a venue for networking between patent searchers and producers and users of non-patent chemical information services. The annual CLAIMS User Conference at the Airlie Foundation in Virginia allowed users to participate in the IFI Quality Control committee to gather to discuss information development and philosophies. The founders of the Patent Information Users Group relied upon the gathering of patent information scientist from major companies at Airlie to guarantee a sufficient number of individuals at one place to hold an organizing meeting, and annual business meetings continued to follow the IFI meeting for a number of years while PIUG grew large enough to support its own conference.
Indeed, the patent information landscape as we know it today is the result of the dedicated work, innovative developments and attention to market needs that are the hallmarks of Harry Allcocks contribution. From the beginning, IFI Claims Patent Services have won renown as one of the most trusted and comprehensive sources of U.S. patent information. Today, IFI Claims is part of the Wolters Kluwer Health group of companies.
The nomination for Mr. Harry Allcock was put forward by Mr. Peter Rusch (Consultant, formerly with Dialog), and was seconded by Mr. Wolfgang Pilch (European Patent Office), Mr. John Myers (formerly with Thomson Scientific and A.H. Robins), Ms. Edlyn Simmons (P&G), and Ms. Ruth Unfleet (Celanese).
Mr. Allcock is currently a member of the Division of Chemical Information, Patent Information Users Group, and the Coalition for Patent and Trademark Information Dissemination, PATCOM.
Anyone wishing to send a congratulatory message to Mr. Allcock may contact Trudi Jones, trudi@IPI-Institute.com , and the greeting will be forwarded
The presentation of the actual IPI-Award plaque to Mr. Allcock will take place at a ceremony to be held during the PIUG Annual Meeting, which takes place May 5-10 2007, at the Hilton Orange County, Costa Mesa, CA.
Award Background and Philosophy
The International Patent Information (IPI) Award is sponsored by Technology & Patent Research (TPR) International Inc. The IPI-Award selection process is presided over by a Board of eminent patent information industry professionals representing Europe, the United States and Japan. The IPI-Award consists of a plaque and an honorarium of $3000.
Ford Khorsandian, President of TPR, explains: "The International Patent Information Award has been established to pay tribute to one individual each year who, through their career as a dedicated patent information professional, has made a significant positive impact on patent information. It is intended to highlight the patent information profession in general and how the profession is valued by others. The Award is made on an international level and has been set up to represent the pinnacle of achievement in the patent information profession. Now in its eighth year, the IPI-Award Hall of Fame is an impressive who's who in patent information. We celebrate these pioneers and learn from their experiences."
From its base in San Diego, California, TPR International specializes in in-depth searching of both patent and non-patent information through online databases, manual searching of document collections worldwide, and provides patent intelligence services to multi-national R&D based corporations and patent law firms. For more information, visit http://www.tprinternational.com/
For further information on the IPI-Award, or the specialist patent information conference and exposition, IPI-ConfEx (http://www.IPI-ConfEx.com), which takes place in Europe every March, contact: Trudi Jones, Trudi@IPI-Institute.com
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