The History of Derwent

Transcription

1 The History of Derwent This year Derwent Information celebrates its 50 th anniversary, and is well established as the world s leading producer of value-added patent information. During this Golden Jubilee year for Derwent, FIZ Karlsruhe s partnership with Derwent will be a comparatively youthful 8 years old. So how did this all come to pass...? The Monty Hyams story 1 Humble beginnings When Monty Hyams, originally a research chemist, became patents manager at Pyrene, he found the work fascinating; however, there wasn't much of it and the pay was mediocre. So, during his regular visits to the British Patent Office, he identified passages of particular interest in chemical patents. The line numbers were passed on to his father, a retired tailor, who transcribed the passages in neat longhand. Monty used the transcriptions to create expert abstracts which were typed, duplicated and dispatched in weekly bulletins, including what became the British Chemical Patents Report and the Commonwealth Pharmaceutical Report. Monty Hyams The Proud Father Soon, there were 100 subscribers to the British Chemical Patents Report and Monty was earning more than his salary at Pyrene - enough that he could pay for other specialists to cover patents in countries like Australia, which published few patents, but did so rapidly. By concentrating on inventions of key interest to drug companies, he attracted business interest. Soon, revenues from his Pharmaceutical Patents Journal were enough to pay for the coverage of Germany and Soviet Union patents. By day, Monty was now deepening his knowledge by working for a patent agent, but the night job progressively took over. During the early 1950s, he switched to part-time, and then took the plunge into full self-employment. Clerical work was carried out by his wife, Valerie, and other helpers from their home - a small suburban house which the previous owners had dignified with the name Derwent. During this time he discovered that an important trick to his work was to identify families of patents. Instead of reporting individually on the same invention as it was published in different countries, Monty realised subsequent patents could be referred back to the first, or parent, publication. In this respect, due to his innovative and efficient idea, Monty can rightly be regarded as The Father of the Patent Family. Brussels Breakthrough By 1955, Derwent covered the chemical patents of most major countries. Monty was wondering how to develop his business further when he was made aware of a situation which was not widely recognised: there was another country which published patents earlier than the two year delay period of most countries and, moreover, it published chemical patents in significant quantities. This country was Belgium. No one had exploited this opportunity because of the formidable difficulties involved - only one copy of each patent was available. This one copy had to be inspected at the Patent Office in Brussels in just one working day. Sensing the commercial potential, Monty took on this abstracting challenge in person, and the Belgian Patents Report was born. Acceptance of his proposal was slow at first: people wondered 1 Source: 'The Monty Hyams story' and Derwent Web Site, Derwent Information Ltd 2000

2 "why Belgium?" However, some of the early disclosures out of Belgium, like the Ziegler process and the hovercraft, were so newsworthy that they were picked up by the popular press. With this free advertising, sales soared and the need for Derwent's coverage of Belgium patent documents became apparent. Searchable Solutions By 1962, in the drug industry alone, Derwent had abstracted over a quarter of a million patents for the Pharmaceutical Patents Journal, but customers had no way to search this accumulated content. A solution of punched, machine readable cards, with the holes denoting chemical structure features was devised. You could mechanically search for these patterns, then read the abstracts printed on the cards. This created the potential for a state-of-the art documentation and retrieval service, but the costs involved would be forty times higher than the Pharmaceutical Patents Journal. This caused alarm. Subscriptions were still below the break-even figure of 30. However, Monty strategically announced that, because of handling difficulties, sales of the new pharmaceutical patent service, Farmdoc, would unfortunately be limited to the first 50 subscribers. There was a remarkable, sudden influx of subscription interest. Monty had to turn people away. This led to accusations of unfair trading. Reluctantly, Monty backed down. Diversification Farmdoc made such an impact that customers were eager for a companion service covering journal literature - an area in which Derwent had absolutely no experience. Fortunately, two consortium services were already operating - one between 12 companies mainly from Germany, and the other between two Swiss companies. Both services were more than happy for Derwent to take over for them - they even made their backlogs available. A system combining the best features of both was designed, staff were recruited and given specialist training, and the new service, Ringdoc, was launched in Similar services soon followed for pesticide (Pestdoc) and veterinary literature (Vetdoc), and plans were announced for patent documentation services in other specialised areas. With its pharmaceutical patent documentation service, Farmdoc, and the addition of similar value-added services for agrochemical (Agdoc) and polymer patents (Plasdoc), Derwent made the transition from a publishing house into a full-fledged information company. There were proper offices too by now, in Central London. Thomson takes an interest Derwent received the UK Queen s award for export achievement in 1965, which helped inspire the Thomson Corporation to approach Monty, and the subsequent discussions led to their purchase of a 50% share in Derwent. Monty welcomed this investment, as he considered himself an information scientist rather than a financier. The deal also had the advantage of leaving him unhindered, at the head of the company. A Customer-led Revolution A powerful lobby headed by a collaboration of 12 European Chemical companies, The Patent Documentation Group, and US corporations including DuPont, Dow Chemical and Eastman Kodak, insisted that what they really wanted was not a number of separate efforts, but one overall service covering the chemical industry in a uniform manner. So the Subscribers themselves drove the way for the development of Central Patents Index, a modular service which each of the organisations could tailor to their in-house business needs. A high basic subscription charge for any of the 12 sections gave the right to as many booklets, microform and tape products as they liked, which were supplied virtually at Derwent's cost for internal distribution. In 1970, a generation before the development of intranets, this was quite revolutionary. Within a few years, coverage of patents was extended to embrace all technology, including electronic and mechanical engineering, and in 1974 the name of the patent service changed from the Central Patents Index to the World Patents Index. The History of Derwent - 2

3 Online Pioneer In the 1970s, the backlog of Derwent s patent information was made computer-readable in order for subscribers to receive the data on magnetic tape. The already enormous volumes of data made searching frustratingly slow. The advent of online search services had perfect timing for Derwent: in 1976, Derwent became one of the first information providers to go up on the SDC ORBIT service. Under the firm leadership and vision of its founder, Derwent retained full control of development strategy for its data on this new service. In the early 1980s, Derwent further expanded its online information horizons to allow both Dialog and Questel to also host its data on a similar basis to ORBIT. Monty continued to run Derwent until 1984, when Thomson bought the remaining shares and he retired to become Life President. Retirement is hard work for Entrepreneurs Monty Hyams' business at Derwent was always about much more than the unprocessed text of patents. From the start, he offered value-added expertise. In the year that Derwent celebrates its Golden Jubilee, it is clear that he left behind a very durable business. In 2000, Monty was honoured as the first ever recipient of the 'International Patent Information (IPI) Award', for his visionary contribution to the world of patent and scientific information. Now 82, Monty still travels into Central London every week, where he manages a number of new abstracting projects, including the Index to Theses. New horizons with FIZ Karlsruhe A Gentleman s agreement During 1992, Paul Gardner, Managing Director of the time, continued Monty Hyams work of expansion into the online world, by leading Derwent into a new business alliance with FIZ Karlsruhe, the European partner of the Scientific and Technical Information Network (STN). The Co-operation Agreement between Derwent and FIZ Karlsruhe was formally executed by him and the Directors of FIZ Karlsruhe, Professor Georg Schultheiss and Bernhard Jehle, on September st (L to R): Bernhard Jehle, Paul Gardner, Georg Schultheiss, Barry Fowler This agreement paved the way for world-wide online access to Derwent WPI, and the various Derwent Literature Files, via STN International. All Derwent databases would be loaded, maintained and updated by FIZ on their computers in Karlsruhe. Of course, as had proved to be the case throughout Derwent s history, the main drive to form this agreement came from the popular request of Derwent Chemical and Pharmaceutical Subscribers. They were especially keen to see the benefits of both Derwent and CAS brought together, for the first time, into a single, unified and professional search platform. This still remains a unique advantage of STN, some eight years later. Professional Searchers have their say From late 1992 to early 1993 there were a series of joint Derwent-STN meetings, for Derwent s most experienced searchers, in Europe, Japan and the USA. The main topic of discussion was the requirements and options for the optimal implementation of Derwent WPI on STN. Patent Search Professionals were keen to have the best implementation possible, especially with respect to accurate and consistent cross-file searching to and from the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), and other STN patent files. Derwent WPI was loaded on to the STN computers at FIZ Karlsruhe, and customer prerelease testing began in earnest in August After a successful test period, the formal launch of Derwent WPI on STN was in December 1993, at the Online Information Meeting in London. Developed The History of Derwent - 3

4 with invaluable feedback from many search experts, the database was made available as two separate files, one for Subscribers (WPIDS) and one for non-subscribers (WPINDEX). Derwent Literature files Derwent Biotechnology Abstracts, Derwent s unique database of commercially relevant Biotechnology from both patent and literature sources, quickly followed the launch of Derwent WPI, and was also released on STN in December Next in line was Derwent s number two product, second only to Derwent WPI, the Derwent Drug File. Still known to many customers by its original name, Ringdoc, the Derwent Drug File was successfully launched on STN in June The STN implementation was the first to offer Derwent customers a fully structure searchable online version, seamlessly incorporating the Derwent Drug Registry into the DRUGU subscriber file. This was followed by the Derwent Drug File s sister databases, the Derwent Veterinary Drug file and the Derwent Crop Protection File. Almost a year later, in November 1995, the highly focussed chemical reactions database, the Derwent Journal of Synthetic Methods joined the growing family of Derwent files, and remains uniquely available online via STN. Genetics patented Derwent s comprehensive patent sequence database, Derwent Geneseq (DGENE), was released on STN in December 1995, and introduced sequence homology searching to STN for the first time. With an archive dating back to 1981, the database is still indispensable for anyone serious about biosequence information, and the online file remains unique to STN. During 2000, many new enhancements were introduced to DGENE, notably nucleic acid homology and peptide translated to nucleic acid homology searching options. A companion for Derwent WPI The Derwent Patent Citation Index, which provides patent family citation coverage from 6 major patenting authorities in single file, was released on STN in April The database was provided as a companion file for Derwent WPI, and continues to be used extensively by STN customers to extend patent prior-art searches, and monitor for potential infringements. Derwent value-add is linked to full-text STN responded rapidly to the increasing importance of internet searching in the mid to late 1990s, by introducing internet platforms for searching STN databases: STN Easy for occasional searcher, and STN on the Web for search professionals. Crucially, STN made sure that the existing industry-standard online communications software, STN Express, kept pace and integrated comfortably into the new browser-based PC environment. Consequently, in March 1999, STN was the first platform to provide direct full-text links from Derwent WPI records to full-text services on the internet, via its Chemport connection. This facility was made available from all three STN interfaces, and included all other STN patent and literature databases. Extending the value-add During 1999, Derwent WPI abstracting was substantially revised and updated. In August of that year, a new Technology Focus abstract field was introduced to all Derwent WPI files on STN, providing supplementary value-added insight into the technical content of the original patent. At the same time, the Derwent World Patents Index Extension (Derwent WPIX) was released as file WPIX, allowing Subscribers to be able to search and display Derwent s extended patent abstracts, from the Documentation Abstracts Journal, for the first time. Coinciding with these changes, an entirely new The History of Derwent - 4

5 structure searchable segment called the Derwent Chemistry Resource, was launched as a part of the subscriber files WPIDS and WPIX. In April 2001, Derwent and FIZ Karlsruhe released the Derwent Chemistry Resource into the non- Subscriber file WPINDEX, allowing non-subscribers their first opportunity to search Derwent s chemical substance indexing on STN. Derwent and STN today Derwent WPI remains an indispensable tool for patent information professionals, largely thanks to the foresight of its founder. It now covers 40 patent-issuing authorities and contains details of over 10 million separate inventions, with over 4 million selected images. FIZ Karlsruhe continues to work closely with Derwent to ensure that information professionals gain more and more sophisticated search and analysis options, required for the increasing complexity of their work. In addition, STN developments in record hyper-linking, and modern easy-to-use internet platforms, continue to steer the two organisations confidently into the internet age. Robert Austin Regional Sales Manager USA FIZ Karlsruhe Derwent files are provided on STN by: Derwent Information Ltd Fachinformationszentrum (FIZ) Karlsruhe The History of Derwent - 5