New Patent Information Conference Announced

I am a little slow on the draw with this one since the announcement was posted to the Patent Information Users Group (PIUG) mailing list on March 6th. The full announcement from TPRI Spokesperson Trudi Jones can be found here . TPRI made headlines a few years ago (at least within the patent searching community) when they initiated the International Patent Information Award. With a world-renowned and internationally represented selection committee the award was immediately accept and highly coveted. It was a long overdue and well-deserved form of recognition for patent information professionals and pioneers. Now TPRI is back with a new patent information conference which will take place in Lisbon in March of 2004. This is another bold undertaking and it will be very interesting to see how well this conference does. With its close proximity in timing to the PIUG Annual Conference it will probably be difficult to get patent information professionals from the US to travel to Europe for another conference. In addition, there are also a number of European based conference including EPIDOS and the International Chemical Information Conference (which I am on the Advisory Board for - in the spirit of full disclosure) which are already well established and will compete with the ever shrinking travel budgets of attendees. PIUG Chair, Lucy Akers, has joined TPRI in this undertaking and her experience with organizing several PIUG conferences and her physical location in Europe will certainly help logistically. Lucy has also done a great deal of work with the European patent information community and this will certainly help create an atmosphere of good will around the conference. TPRI President, Ford Khorsandian, also has many years of experience working with international clients having been with Derwent for several years and in charge of international sales and marketing with Chemical Abstracts Service for a few years. I suppose we shall have to wait and see if this conference resonates with a European audience and establishes a following. As it often is with these types of activities, content is king so I suppose the first hurdle the group will have to face is attracting a world-class set of speakers for the inaugural meeting. I will be sure to post another note once more information is provided on pricing and speakers for the event.
Posted: Mon - April 7, 2003 at 06:51 AM   Patinformatics   General Information   Email Comments