Cassis Currents No. 6
January 2000

JANE MYERS RETIRES FROM THE USPTO

Figure 1

After 32 years of service, Jane Myers retired from the PTO effective December 31, 1999. Jane held a variety of positions during her career and gained an extraordinary knowledge of patents and trademarks. Since 1997, Jane served as the Director of the Office for Patent and Trademark Information (OPTI), and was responsible for the following areas: The Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program, Public Search Services Program, Technology Assessment and Forecast Program, Optical Disc Publishing Program, OnlinePublishing Program, Patent and Trademark Data Dissemination Program, Call Center and Marketing Services Program, and Customer Services Program, all delivering patent and trademark information to the public.

A native of Washington DC, Jane attended the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1968, after obtaining her degree, Jane became a patent examiner in the chemical arts. While an examiner, Jane was detailed to the Office of Technology Assessment and Forecast (OTAF) and chemical classification. Each assignment lasted a year. The time spent in these two areas directed Jane's future path.

After twelve years as an examiner, Jane moved to OTAF as a senior analyst. During this time, she worked on the well-known Patent Profiles, a series of publications looking at patenting trends and emerging technologies. In 1985, Jane joined the Documentation Organizations, and in 1988, became Director of the Office of Documentation Information, responsible for TAF and the dissemination of documentation products in paper and CD-ROM formats (after the 1987 inception of Cassis). 

Withstanding a few division name changes and reorganizations along the way, Jane remained involved in creating and providing patent and trademark information. In 1994 the Information Dissemination Organizations (IDO) was formed, bringing together the electronic development and dissemination of patent and trademark information to the public in a variety of formats. 

Another exciting development in Jane's career was her involvement with Trilateral activities. During the early 90's, Jane made numerous trips to Europe. Her expertise and public speaking abilities assisted her in forming friendships with colleagues in many intellectual property offices throughout the world. She served as vice-chairperson of the WIPO Ad Hoc Working Group on Optical Storage and on the Mimosa Trilateral Working Group on CD Software.

Jane considers one of her greatest career achievements to be the task of releasing the patent and trademark information databases on the PTO Website. She was especially impressed by the speed and accuracy of the deployment. Reflecting on her career, Jane regards the past 5½ years in IDO to be her most rewarding years. "Being able to direct the development of patent and trademark data on tapes, optical discs, and statistics, and to see it disseminated in PTDLs, the Public Search Room, and on the Web has been very satisfying."

Jane's husband, Carl, is also retiring from the Government after 35 years of service. They plan to divide their time between Florida and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with a home-base here in the Washington, DC area. A little skiing will be thrown in for good measure.

When asked about what she will miss the most, Jane replied, "my staff and colleagues." The PTO, as well as her colleagues around the country and the world, will miss her expertise and enthusiasm for patent information.

We wish Jane all the best!

STATUS OF THE FUTURE Cassis2 PRODUCTS

The Cassis2 Test Disc A is being distributed to all subscribers for testing and evaluation in early February. The earlier anticipated distribution date was delayed due to our recent transition to new contractors. 

Included in the shipment will be a draft version of the Cassis2 Installation and Reference Manual, installation information and instructions, and a comment reply card. Please refer to the installation information before installing the disc. There are several important steps that if not followed properly may influence the product's performance. We welcome your comments and suggestions about the new functionality and interface. Your comments and suggestions will be factored into Cassis2's continued development. 

The development team is currently working on a Cassis2 Trademarks ASSIGN disc. In coordinating the migration of all Cassis products, the team is also working on installation procedures that will support multiple discs, and allow for navigation between discs.

WORD INDEX FEATURE OF Cassis2

Figure 2

Often users aren't sure about the spelling of a search term or the proper format for entering a term in a specific search field. Users may also want to view variations on a term. In such cases, the Word Index feature of Cassis2 provides assistance. The Word Index (similar to the current Cassis product's F2 Browse key functionality) displays a browsable list containing all search terms in a field. The Word Index window is displayed in Figure 2.

To display a database field's index, position the cursor in a query form field. To access the Word Index, click the Index icon located on the toolbar, or click the Tools main menu option and select Index. After opening the Word Index, move to a specific letter or term by entering the term in the Scroll to box. Users may also browse entries using the keyboard's Up and Down arrow keys. Use the tool's Up and Downarrows to jump between alphabetical listings of entries. 

Each index entry displays the search term, the number of occurrences for the term in the database field, and the number of documents containing the term. The number of occurrences may be greater than the number of documents because the term may be used more than once in a document. To insert a search term into a search statement, highlight the term and click the Paste button, or double-click the term. Only one search term can be selected at a time.

Hint: Terms beginning with numbers and terms containing punctuation are listed at the end of the index following the alphabetical terms.

THE SESSION HISTORY FEATURE OF Cassis2

Figure 3

The Cassis2 product offers many improvements not available in the original Cassis product. The Session History tool is one such enhancement. This new tool automatically saves the entire history of each search session while users are performing asearch. Using the Session History tool, users can view the history and re-use and include previously used search statements in new searches without retyping entire search strings. It is also possible to save individual queries or entire search histories to re-use in subsequent search sessions. Queries or search histories are saved and reloaded from the Session History window. 

To display the session history, click the Session History icon, or click the Tools main menu option and select Session History. The History window displays the history for the current search session. Each history entry includes the Set Number (S#) corresponding to the order in which the search statement was entered, the number of occurrences of the search term(s) in the database, the number of documents retrieved, and the query as it was interpreted by the search engine. 

To display a query in the text entry box located at the bottom of the window, highlight a query. Relevance ranked answer sets are displayed with a yellow plus sign (+) to identify them from unranked answer sets. (Unranked answer sets are not given separate set numbers.)

To reuse or combine queries from current search sessions without re-entering the search statements, enter the numbers of the sets. For example, to combine sets 3 and 4, enter 3 and 4 in the text window. Entering S3 and S4 instructs the system to search for S3 and S4 as search terms. To search for numerals 3 and 4 as search terms, enclose the numbers in quotation marks, "3" and "4." 

SPOTLIGHT ON ODPP STAFF - TOM TIEDEMAN
 
We welcome Tom Tiedeman as the fourth CD-ROM engineer on the ODPP staff. For the past two years Tom had been providing support to the ODPP staff as a contractor consulting on the database production of the searchable Cassis patent and trademark discs. Additionally, Tom has also been a member of the Cassis2 interface development team. He will continue to support the current Cassis products and assist in the Cassis 2 migration efforts.

Tom brings fifteen years of electronic publishing and information experience to his position. He assisted on the development of one of the first CD-ROMs used for data storage. (The first disc produced under the High Sierra standard.) As president of Logical Data Expression, Tom developed a search engine used for searching full text documents. He has also served as a consultant to the UN Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva, Switzerland, preparing documents dealing with the harmonization of building standards.

Tom is no stranger to patents. He performed his first patent search in the PTO search room at the age of 14. Unfortunately, his invention of a mirror attached to a golf club to 

improve putting techniques wasn't abig seller. His father, on the other hand, has been more successful, and is the holder of more than 20 patents, most relating to the aviation industry.

Tom is married and has two children, a daughter soon to graduate from college and a son just about to graduate from high school and leave for college. The family is complete with a loyal dog. Tom enjoys bike riding, gardening, and gourmet cooking. Former hobbies include the production of his own wine - he even crushed the grapes by foot.

PRODUCTION DELAYS

We have recently encountered delays with both the document delivery and searchable Cassis products due to the transition to new contractors. The January migration of USAPat to DVD-ROM has also been delayed. 

Database production is continuing and we are working to ensure that all products will be back on schedule as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience these delays may have caused you.

1999 TOP 10 PATENTING ORGANIZATIONS AT THE PTO 

The top 10 private sector patent recipients for calendar year 1999 were recently announced by the PTO.  The corporations and number of patents issued in 1999 are ranked below:

Organization	Patents Issued
International Business Machines Corporation	2,756
NEC Corporation	1,842
Canon Kabushiki Kaisha	1,795
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.	1,545
Sony Corporation	1,409
Toshiba Corporation	1,200
Fujitsu Limited	1,193
Motorola Inc.	1,192
Lucent Technologies Inc.	1,153
Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha	1,054
Important:  These preliminary counts are subject to correction.  The final listing should be available by early April.