Abstract
Walter Teague of SAS send an email to the members of the PIUG mailing list offering to let members have a free trial of their Patent Discovery Service powered by M-CAM . In a somewhat surprising move SAS has also signed up to be a sponsor of the 2003 PIUG Annual Meeting.

A copy of the message sent by Walter to the PIUG mailing list is below:

"Dear PIUG-L members:

We all know that patent research can be a time-consuming, frustrating process
that often ends in unsatisfactory results. And performing multiple queries into multiple
databases doesn't make the process any more manageable.

Now, with the new patent discovery service from SAS, all that has changed.

- Discover patent data from the largest audited online patent database available.
- Find relevant prior art that traditional tools miss.
- Download PDF images of patent documents at no additional cost.

SAS IntelliVisor for Patent Discovery is a fast, easy-to-use browser-based tool that
provides access to the most current, normalized and audited global patent information
available. Users need only a Web browser and password to access this comprehensive,
customizable database.

To demonstrate the capabilities of this new service, SAS is offering a FREE trial, which
includes a number of fully functional patent queries. We think you'll agree that this is the
fastest, most user-friendly and most thorough patent discovery tool on the market.

SAS has been delivering innovative business intelligence software and services for more
than 25 years. Our products and solutions provide reliable intellectual property insight and
true enterprise intelligence at more than 40,000 sites worldwide.

Visit www.sas.com/solutions/patent to learn more and register for the free trial. You've got nothing to lose. SAS will have an exhibit at the PIUG 2003 Annual Conference in Chicago, May 3-9. Come by and register to win great prizes and learn more about SAS IntelliVisor for Patent Discovery. Sincerely, Walter Teague SAS US & Canada: 1-866-556-4737 Email replies: CICenter@sas.com" So I decided to give the system a spin but as it turns out I can't really test it yet since I use a Macintosh at home and the system does not seem to work with Mac browsers. I was able to find out a few interesting things by simply signing up for the trial however. To begin with the service is divided into three sections; Discover (also called SmartText), Analyze (called Compass) and View (called Franklin) and the trial allows the user to try each section ten times. The next time I am on a PC I will give it a try and post my comments separately. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the experience was the fact that included in the email with the password was an invoice for a year's worth of the service. SAS claims that this is for convenience and to help streamline the process since they are certain that once you try the service you will immediately want to sign up. At $5,000/year (an incredible discount from the $50,000 price tag that was mentioned in the original Wall Street Journal add that launched the service, which to be fair may have also included some analysis by an attorney) it will be interesting to see if people sign up for the service for completeness sake since based on my past experience with the M-CAM software there are likely to be a few hits discovered using this route that will not be discovered using standard keyword and citation searches alone. I suppose time will tell.