Minutes from PLL SIS Intellectual Property Group Business Meeting
100th AALL Annual Meeting & Conference
Monday, July 16, 2007
Co-Chairs: Jackie Grossman, Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP
Fran Sheehan, Fish and Richardson P.C.
1. Welcome and Introductions
The meeting began with lunch sponsored by Questel Orbit. Jackie opened the business
portion of the meeting by introducing herself and Fran Sheehan, her co-chair. Jackie then
introduced Mr. Elliott Linder (ELinder@questel.com), Sales Manager, North America from
Questel Orbit, who welcomed the IP group and invited everyone to attend a session about
Questel’s products and services later on during the conference.
Each meeting attendee introduced himself. Approximately 40 persons attended the
meeting, about twice last year's attendance.
Fran welcomed the new members and said they should feel free to contact the more
experienced librarians at any time for assistance. She mentioned the IP listserv and how to
subscribe. PIUG was also suggested as a resource for both experienced and new patent searchers.
IP group member and PLL chair Lucy Curci-Gonzalez mentioned that the IP group is the
most energetic and active PLL group.
2. Review of last year's accomplishments and goals for next year
Survey results. Based on a member survey, a program on Patent Searching
Fundamentals will be submitted for possible presentation at the 2008 AALL conference. IP
group member Jennifer Berman is on the 2008 program selection committee.
Social networking. The IP group had five social networking events last year in various
cities. Volunteers were solicited as hosts for future events. Fran mentioned that the Chairs may
be able to travel to the networking events. Watch for upcoming events posted to the listserv and
to the PLL-SIS Intellectual Property website.
Perspectives articles. IP group member Donna Fisher was introduced as the co-chair of
Perspectives, the PLL quarterly newsletter. The IP group has been contributing a regular article
to Perspectives for the last few issues and will continue to do so. Volunteers to write articles
were solicited. A suggestion was made for an article on domain names.
Additions to web page. Articles and presentations have been added to the IP web page.
2008 Program Proposal. Final submission of the program for the 2008 AALL
conference is due by 8/15/07. Three of the five speakers are already scheduled; volunteers to be
the remaining two speakers were solicited. The five topics to be covered in the presentation are:
Research regarding assignments, patent family and legal status research, searches for litigation
related to specific patents, searches for foreign patents and abstracts and prior art searching
basics. Lucy observed there are tremendous opportunities in 2009 when the AALL conference
will be held in Washington, D.C., home of the USPTO.
3. IP Resources Discussion
Design Patents Bibliography. Lucy's staff has prepared a design patents
bibliography and requested additions to the bibliography before considering it completed. She
specifically asked if anyone could suggest a definitive book on the topic. Lucy also suggested
that the group post the bibliography on our website.
Outsourcing. Donna Fisher asked the group if any law firms are considering or are
outsourcing patent preparation and prosecution. No one responded in the affirmative. The only
comment was from Lucy, who said they had considered the idea but are not outsourcing at this
time.
Vendor issues. There was discussion on Thomson CompuMark Saegis interface
problems. Individuals experiencing problems are encouraged to individually contact Saegis to
complain about the problem.
General discussion. Other general questions included the use of RSS feeds to sweep
Public Pair, Lexis Patent Optimizer, and Thompson West IP Monitor.
Minutes respectfully submitted by Donna M. Fisher.