How PIUG Works

Members are invited to add new content to this page on how PIUG works.

Membership

PIUG maintains a membership of over 700 patent professionals from 27 countries with the largest concentration of members from the USA, Europe and Japan. PIUG members are patent information researchers, patent attorneys, patent agents, licensing professionals, patent information vendors, and patent documentation experts. Many PIUG members do patent searching for corporations, law firms, and academic institutions as well as many independent patent information consultants. These members are employed in performing patentability, freedom to practice, and validity patent searches or are engaged in patent information analysis as a strategic innovation tool for Fortune 500 and multinational companies, leading universities and major IP law firms. Other PIUG members are employed in information companies, patent offices, and individual consulting practices providing services in support of patent searchers. Annual dues are modest to encourage broad membership.

Board of Directors

The business aspects of PIUG are managed by the Board of Directors, which consists of the elected officers and three Directors. The Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Treasurer are elected by a vote of Active Members for two-year terms commencing on June 1 of even numbered years. The immediate past chair becomes a Director upon a vote of the Board, and also serves a 2-year term. Two Directors-at-Large are elected for 4-year terms, with one of the two seats filled in each election.

The Board is responsible for managing finances, overseeing conferences, appointing committee chairs, liaising with our committees, and dealing with outside organizations. The members meet in person at the Annual Conference and communicate regularly through teleconferences, email and, of course, the PIUG wiki.

Conferences

PIUG holds three annual meetings. Registration for all meetings is open to all. Presentations are usually available in the archives to current PIUG members.

The PIUG Annual Conference is a full week of presentations, workshops, vendor training sessions, and social events, held in the spring in a location in the United States. Recent themes for the Annual Meetings have included “Moving Targets: Current & Future Best Practices and Opportunities for Patent Information Professionals” (2010 in Baltimore, MD), “Searching for Patents Beyond Your Borders” (2009, in San Antonio, TX), and “20 Years of Patent Searching in a World of Emerging Technologies. Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of PIUG!” (2008, in Arlington, VA near the USPTO).

The annual, multi-day Northeast Conference in New Jersey each autumn usually includes one day of participant presentations on matters of direct use to practicing patent searchers and round-table discussion. The Northeast Conference also has several days of workshops and user training. The PIUG 2010 Northeast Conference will feature the “Patent Information Fundamentals” course, formerly offered by the Pharmaceutical Education and Research Institute (PERI), offered for the first time by PIUG in 2010.

The Biotechnology Meeting is held one day in mid-winter, usually in Cambridge, Massachusetts but plans are being made for the 2011 meeting in San Francisco. Recent themes have been “Managing Biosequences: Retrieval to Results” (2010), and Sequence Searching and Beyond: Build a Better Searcher, Build a Better Search” (2009).

Education

Education in patent information theory, resources and techniques has been part of PIUG's mission from its inception. PIUG's conferences and accompanying workshops are designed to educate our members and keep them up to date on developments in the field, and there s a knowledgebase and istings of educational opportunities on the wiki. The PIUG Education and Training Task Force (PETT) was established to increase educational opportunities. PETT has three working groups - Mentoring, Certification and Training. There is much work to be done, and all PIUG members are invited to join the working groups.

PIUG is offering a 2-day course, Patent Information Fundamentals, following the 2010 Northeast Conference. This course is an enhanced version of the PERI Patent Information for the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry course that has been offered since 1989. Unlike most other patent information workshops, this course teaches the principals of patent law, information resources, searching, and reporting information rather than teaching how to use particular search tools.

Communications

Communication methods have evolved for PIUG participants. The principal medium for facilitating interaction among its member and other interested individuals is the PIUG wiki, which was created in 2008 to promote sharing of information and collaboration. The PIUG space contains content accessible to all and available for editing to all PIUG wiki registrants. It includes the PIUG Discussion Forum (PIUG-DF), which replaced the long-running PIUG Discussion List, and other forums including Job Postings and Situations Wanted forums. The wiki has consistent design and functionality throughout, allowing simple participation through page creation and commenting by members of the global patent information community. Over 1400 users are registered for the PIUG wiki and PIUG-DF. PIUG membership is not required except for access to members-only content and most PIUG committees, teams and working groups. The PIUG-DF provides users with individual alerts and/or Daily Update email messages of new topics or comments per each user's settings. PIUG publishes a biannual newsletter that features member articles, search tips and information on patent database vendor and producer developments. Access to the PIUG Newsletter is available to all current PIUG members, as is inclusion in the PIUG LinkedIn Group.

Awards

PIUG Service Awards were established in 1998. The PIUG Service Award is presented at the PIUG Annual Meeting to individuals who have made a major or sustained contribution to the organization. Any Active Member of PIUG who is not a current member of the Board of Director is eligible for a PIUG Service Award. Candidates for Service Awards can be suggested by any member of PIUG, and the recipients are selected by the Board of Directors.

The annual Brian Stockdale Memorial Award was first presented in 2002 to provide support to new members to attend an Annual Conference. The award was established in honor of the late Brian Stockdale with initial funding by Technology and Patent Research International and Thomson Scientific (now Thomson Reuters). Anyone new to the patent information profession, having less than 3 years total experience as a patent information professional or currently enrolled in a college or university with a demonstrated interest in pursuing a career in patents, may submit an essay detailing his or her experience and interest in patent information and need for support to attend the Annual Conference. The award consists of up to $1500 to cover travel and expenses plus registration in the conference, provided by PIUG. In addition, sponsors of fee-based workshops at the conferences may offer free registration as part of the award package.

Partnerships

A cooperative memorandum of understanding was signed in 2008 with the Confederacy of European Patent Information User Groups (CEPIUG); see Patent Information User Groups in Europe join together.  PIUG also has partnerships with AIIP and are developing one with LES.  Most of these agreements are reciprocal ones that allow members of the respective groups to attend each others events at the members rate.

PIUG also has agreements with a number of conferences including ICIC and the IP Law Summit that allows PIUG members to attend these events at a discounted rate.

Subchapters

The formation of the PIUG Subchapter in China was approved by the PIUG Board of Directors in 2009. The China Subchapter has more than 130 registered users as of September 2010. They come from universities; companies such as Baosteel, Dow Chemical, and Philips; the Chinese Patent Office (SIPO); and database vendors. The PIUG China Subchapter welcomes patent information professionals in China or of Chinese descent. The subchapter website is at http://www.piug.org.cn.