Peter Norton Named IPI-Award Recipient 2009

The International Selection Board for the IPI Award, now in its 10^th year, has named Peter Norton as the recipient for 2009.  The announcement was made 2^nd March, 2009 at the International Patent Information Conference and Exposition, IPI-ConfEx, held in Venice-Mestre - www.ipi-confex.com

The Award is being bestowed in recognition of Mr. Norton's outstanding work while at Derwent, now Thomson Reuters. Norton is credited for having developed a series of chemical indexing systems and retrieval methods that revolutionized the way that information professionals were able to search for references to chemical structures. Each system was more innovative than the last, making use of the latest cutting edge technology available. 

Presiding over the announcement were members of the IPI-Award Selection Board, an international body responsible for reviewing the nominations. The proceedings were commenced by Mr. Ford Khorsandian of Technology & Patent Research that sponsors of the Award, and Dr. Ian Sinclair, Chairman of the IPI-Award Selection Board.  International Selection Board members present were Dr. Gerhard Fischer, Mr. Koh Ishii, Mr. Aalt van de Kuilen, and Ms. Edlyn Simmons. Those not able to be present, but who sent their best wishes, were Ms. Cynthia Barcelon Yang, Ms. Minoo Phillip, Ms. Suzanne Robins and Mr. Roy Zimmermann. 

After graduating from Sheffield University with a BSc Hons in Chemistry, Norton took a job as a synthetic organic chemist at a pharmaceutical company.  He soon gravitated to the technical information research department and found himself searching a new punch-card system for patent information.  In 1963 Norton joined Derwent Publications, where he immediately became involved with the design of retrieval systems, starting with a chemical fragmentation system that facilitated the retrieval of Markush formulae.  Thus the early Derwent fragmentation code system was born and was later adapted by Norton for polymers with the introduction of the Plasdoc coding system.  Norton also went on to develop the Derwent Manual Codes for classification of different technologies.  

With the advent of online searching in 1976 when the Derwent files were loaded onto SDC-Orbit, the limitations of the 80 column punched card format were removed, liberating Norton to modify and expand the fragmentation code during 1978-1981 to develop the 'New Chemical Code'. Over 2700 codes were introduced and are still much relied upon today. 

In 1983 Norton started to investigate exciting possibilities for full topological input of Markush structures and the subsequent searching of these. In partnership with the Telesystemes organization, Norton was instrumental in the development of the Markush DARC search system together with INPI, the French Patent Office.  The system was implemented in 1986, and the full graphics search system became available as WPIM in 1989. 

In addition to creating the indexing systems, Norton also developed user manuals and training materials and travelled extensively throughout Europe, the US, and Japan, in training users, presenting papers, and becoming a mentor to an entire generation of patent searchers. 

Peter Norton was nominated by Bob Stembridge of Thomson Reuters, and seconded by Gez Cross (Thomson Reuters) and Sandy Burcham, (Consultant).  Norton's work is undoubtedly a cornerstone for chemical searching and has been an enormous benefit to patent information professionals across the globe.  This honor adds to the ACS Herman Skolnik award that Norton gained in 2002.

The IPI Award consists of a plaque and an honorarium of $3000.  The presentation ceremony to Mr. Norton will take place at an evening dinner event on May 4^th during the upcoming annual meeting of the Patent Information Users Group in San Antonio, Texas, May 2-7, 2009 - www.PIUG.org

The International Patent Information Award is sponsored by patent search firm TPR International, specializing in in-depth patent and non-patent literature searching and analysis for validity, infringement, patentability and other purposes, as well as providing tailored searching and analysis solutions - www.TPRInternational.com

Further information will be posted on the IPI-Award website soon at www.IPI-Award.com, or contact Trudi Jones, Trudi@TPRInternational.com, +1 (858) 592 9084.