� Mr. Wolfgang Pilch Named IPI Award Recipient 2002

(Venue: Patent Information Users Group Annual Conference 2002, Berkeley, CA)

Following Luncheon, Monday 22^nd April, 2002:

Ford Khorsandian (IPI Award Sponsor, TPR):

Ladies and Gentlemen, we would like to proceed with the announcement for the IPI Award 2002. I’d like to hand over to Trudi Jones of Technology & Patent Research International, sponsors of the IPI Award.

Trudi Jones (TPR):

Thank you Ford, and thank you PIUG Friends.

As many of you may already be aware, especially if you attended the PIUG Annual Conference last year, 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. The Award is made on an international level and has been set up to represent the pinnacle of achievement in the patent information profession. Last year, the Award was presented to Dr. Stu Kaback, and we are honored and privileged to have him present today.

The IPI Award is not only for the individual, but it is also for everyone here because it is designed to bring attention to the work that is done worldwide, every day, by highly-skilled and committed professionals like those here. Professionals who are advancing the frontiers of information science and who set the pace for development in this high-tech age. How else are companies able to advance if not by building on known art, and how else can that known art be found and utilized if not through efficient information retrieval systems and methods? How else, if not through the efforts of dedicated information professionals constantly setting high standards and driving forward, can information systems be improved and new methods be implemented?

Nominations for the IPI Award are sought from the international patent community each year and are reviewed by an International Selection Board. The Board Members that we are honored to have here today are Lucy Akers, Koh Ishii from Japan, and Ford Khorsandian (who is a non-voting member of the Board).

Before Lucy announces this year’s recipient for the IPI Award. I’d just like to mention about the new ‘Friends of the Award’ symbol that has been introduced this year.

The IPI Award has been established for three years and has already attained a high level of recognition in the international patent community. The purpose of the ‘Friends of the Award’ symbol is to help increase that recognition by linking with various organizations (user groups, government bodies, vendors, etc.) to show the support of the international community for excellence in patent information. The PIUG has become the very first ‘Friend of the Award’ and has graciously included the new ‘Friends’ symbol on the PIUG website. Thank You PIUG. The Patent Documentation Group (PDG) had its annual meeting last week, and we have heard that they are also interested in becoming a ‘Friend of the Award’, which is fantastic.

Lucy Akers (IPI Award Board Member, and Chairperson of PIUG):

In choosing the recipient for 2002, the Board has had the following comments regarding the individual who has finally been chosen for the honor:

“The extent to which a contribution has made a sustaining impact is a key factor and central to the ethos of the IPI Award. There seems to be little doubt that this candidate’s contribution has “stood the test of time” and is a foundation stone of current practices in patent information.”

“In the late 70s, the technical leadership required to develop information systems was formidable. It was the convergence of this candidate’s inspirational leadership, technical mastery and detailed understanding of the subject domain that was key to his pioneering developments.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to announce that the recipient of the International Patent Information Award for 2002 is the former Technical Director of INPADOC and the person most closely attributed with founding and developing the INPADOC patent family database – Mr. Wolfgang Pilch.

Trudi Jones:

Mr. Pilch’s early recognition of the importance of global patent information and the efforts he made to collect source data from the patent offices of the world and coordinate it into a patent family system has been of great benefit to patent information users around the world for decades. The INPADOC database remains a valuable tool and has also served as the foundation for new databases. This file has saved patent information users literally thousands of hours in finding family equivalents. He recognized a big problem and developed a wonderful solution!

It all started in 1972 when the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) selected the Austrian Patent Office’s bid to become an international patent documentation center. In his role as Technical Director of the newly-founded INPADOC, Wolfgang Pilch oversaw the creation of the bibliographic patent database, which was updated by regular deliveries from patent offices and institutions from all continents. Through his efforts, Mr. Pilch was responsible for developing the INPADOC patent family service, as well as special programs such as a tool to query the Kanji-based PATOLIS database and to derive the answers in plain English.

In 1991, INPADOC was incorporated in the European Patent Office, which based its EPIDOS product line on the services of the former INPADOC. Mr. Pilch became Director in the Vienna sub-office of the European Patent Office. Five years later he went back to the Austrian Patent office where he is involved in special projects.

Mr. Pilch’s nomination was put forward by Harry Allcock and seconded by Jim Terragno, Ursula Schoch-Gruebler and Peter Rusch.

Ford Khorsandian:

All being well, we should have Mr. Pilch on the phone right now from his home in Austria. Mr. Pilch, are you there?

Wolfgang Pilch:

Yes, I am here

Ford Khorsandian:

I think Mr. Ishii would like to say a few words to you.

Koh Ishii (IPI Award Board Member from Japan):

Mr Pilch, on behalf of the IPI Selection Board and all of us gathered here at the PIUG Annual Conference, we would like to thank you for your immense contribution to patent information and congratulate you on being named the recipient of the IPI Award.

Wolfgang Pilch:

Ms. Akers, Mr. Ishii, thank you for this announcement I am really moved. Normally a speaker can address his audience and can complete the prepared list of names he has by looking over the audience. I can’t, therefore I just say ladies and gentlemen, PIUG members co-operators, customers and friends. I hope, that a lot of you are present. It is really an honour for me, that the INPADOC services which were the product of a common Austrian effort have become recognized by such a committee of experts. In the 1970s my colleagues and I had a wonderful time in developing and implementing these services. We became acquainted with EDP experts in patent offices on all continents who were willing to send the data of their respective offices and we found that a spirit of cooperation is quite usual among patent information experts worldwide. I may mention, that such an international cooperation in a sensitive field was not usual at this time when the cold war still prevailed.

In the next phase we presented the services to patent experts in Europe and soon we could also establish contacts with the US and Japan.

The unmatched experience of Harry Alcock from IFI in the patent information field gave us an insight in earlier efforts for combining patent families manually. Harry made it possible, that the Austrian delegation could attend the famous IFI meetings in Airlie and I quickly became acquainted with the needs of the US customers as well as with their habits in playing poker.

I got to know Jim Terragno at an earlier stage, when he audited INPADOC representing WIPO and Dr.Bogsch.

Ford Khorsandian:

We also have Harry Allcock here and he would like to ask Mr. Pilch a couple of questions.

Harry Allcock (Nominator, and Vice-President of IFI Plenum):

Hello Wolfgang

Wolfgang Pilch:

Hi Harry, it’s great to hear you voice. I really have to thank you for nominating me for this Award. It makes me so proud and happy, that the real adventurous times of the 1970s when the INPADOC services were hammered out are still not forgotten.

Harry Allcock:

You’re welcome. My first question is: What was your reaction when you first heard that you were to be the recipient of the IPI Award?

Wolfgang Pilch:

I was working on a paper on Friday 22^nd February of this year when Mr. Khorsandian was on the phone explaining to me the possibility of my receiving the IPI award for 2002. The call came completely out of the blue, nobody had contacted me in this matter before. It took me some seconds to fully comprehend the message. I told Mr. Khorsandian that I felt honoured and in parallel I tried to collect my memories on the Award and I remembered the recipients for 2000 and 2001. I became acquainted with Mr. Hyams in London several days after Dr. Bogsch had accepted me as the technical expert for the INPADOC project in 1973. I have read many articles from Dr. Kaback and therefore I asked myself: “Two times the election board for the award was right. I hope, they are right a third time”.

Harry Allcock:

The other question I’d like to ask is whether there is a special memory that you can share with us from when you were setting up INPADOC to illustrate what was happening around that time?

Wolfgang Pilch:

Let us go back in time. There was still cold war, Gerald Ford was president of the US Leonid Brezhnev was Soviet leader. There were national patent applications only, PCT was a dream, the EPO was on the drawing board, Bill Gates was still a student in Harvard computer output on microfiche was a modern medium and not even Isaac Asimov wrote about 60GB databases to be carried around in laptops. In July 1973 I started to work as technical director of INPADOC. When I toured around I had a mechanical typewriter with me to write my reports which was a lot heavier than any known laptop and when we developed programs on our SIEMENS mainframe regular production had to stop, as we needed 64Kbyte main memory.

At this time not only technical, but also political developments in the patent area took place, which changed the working environment completely. When WIPO negotiated with Austria the foundation of INPADOC a small team came to Vienna which was headed by Dr. Bogsch and I got in contact with the late Dr. Pfanner, with Dr. Claus and Mr. Morozow. PCT was not ratified and in the Hague the Institut International des Brevets (IIB) prepared itself for its tasks within the EPO. I had the chance to talk with Mr. Hyams, I met the late Mr. Maxwell from PERGAMON and Jim Terragno demonstrated the interesting video disc project.

In the early days of INPADOC we received not only punched cards, we also received punched paper tape to start our data base. When I attended my first IFI meeting, Harry Alcock and Jack Lotz gave me the opportunity to present our database. In other words, we showed endless sorted lists of bibliographic data on microfiche and we explained how we brought the different input formats and data together to create a unified file.

Very soon we created a patent family database or, to be more correct, a patent family index which was available online. At this time, our competitive edge was an interface to the teletype network and lawyers in many countries used the possibility to type in a patent number and to wait for several minutes until the patent-family poured out neatly typed.

When we got our chance to show this system during the IFI meeting we used a dumb terminal with acoustic coupler 300 bps and a thermoprinter. But time goes by quickly and in 1983 our online file at PERGAMON was ready.

It was a great time but very soon our work became tremendously boosted by the new technologies of online databases and CD-ROMs, not to mention the Internet, which makes all earlier systems look a little funny and ineffective.

Looking into my e-mail I see the exhibitors of the 2002 PIUG demonstration rooms, I see the references to the INPADOC file. It was a long way from the first INPADOC records to the present systems, but it has not taken such a long time and I hope, we all will see many more breathtaking developments in this field.

Harry Allcock:

Wolfgang, there’s someone else here who’d like to say hello to you.

Peter Rusch (seconding Nominator):

Hi Wolfgang. Congratulations on being the winner of the IPI Award.

Wolfgang Pilch:

Hello Peter! What a surprise to hear your voice!

Ford Khorsandian:

Thank you Mr. Pilch. Thank you Harry and Peter. I would like to emphasize the importance of the nomination process. If a person is not nominated, they just don’t get considered by the International Selection Board. Therefore, please keep that in mind for someone special who has made a significant contribution, to get them on the list of candidates for consideration.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the PIUG and especially Lucy Akers for her leadership in pushing forward the ‘Friends of the Award’ concept. I would like to thank Mr. Ishii for all his work in Japan with regard to the IPI Award. Thank you Mr. Wada, President of PATOLIS, who is also with us at this meeting, for your support in bringing the IPI Award to the attention of the Japanese audience. I would also like to give a special thanks to Derwent for very generously hosting the first and the second IPI Award ceremonies.

Thank you everyone for your attention. I’d like to close by saying that the presentation ceremony to Mr. Pilch will take place later this year in Europe and details will be posted on the IPI Award Website, patentinformationaward.com.

That concludes the announcement.

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