Last year, when I first ventured to the Information Retrieval Facility's symposium the fledgling event made no bones that it didn't have all the answers to problems facing the worlds of Information Retrieval and Patent specialists, it did however promise to make inroads into attempting to solve these by opening a dialogue between the two camps. The intention was to make better use of the expertise of both professions and therefore help both cope with the deluge of complex patent information out there. There was a sense of purpose if you like.
12 months on and a bigger and better venue hosts the 2008 gathering, by my (crude) estimate the attendance has doubled - thankfully though there is also more elbowroom.
Opening proceedings, a spokesman from the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development emphasised how the Austrian economy (alongside many others in the developed world) depends on effective patent research.
Explaining that there are now 60 million patents filed worldwide, it was not that surprising to here the industry is worth 60billion Euros. With 3,000 patent applications filed each day across the globe (at least half of which originate in Asia) the scale of information to contend with for professionals is staggering.
All our effort is being made to bring these new technologies to the forefront, "it will be worth the effort" he said
Meanwhile, John Tait, Chief Scientific Officer for the IRF outlined the challenges that still faced the industry as well as the current scenario facing the IR and IP worlds, he suggested that the IP community had not fully embraced the full scope of search technology of the last 15 years, but the purpose of the IRF was to make both practical and affordable systems available to them.
With that proceedings moved quickly on to the formidable problem of multi-lingual information search, more to follow...
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