Peter Norton receives the tenth annual IPI Award
April 2009
Peter Norton, formerly of Thomson Reuters, has received the annual IPI Award for outstanding contribution to the development of patent information.
Consider this: you are asked to find patents that describe new types of azabicycloalkane derivatives useful as antibacterial agents and beta-lactamase inhibitors of general formula:
where, amongst many variations, X= (CO)-NR-, R1,R2 = H and R3,R4 form a phenyl ring.
The only way to retrieve patents to compounds of this type is to conduct a chemical structure search. Chances are, you'll want to use either a fragmentation code search, a graphical Markush search, manual codes or a combination of any of these. In which case you'll likely be using one of the many coding systems originally developed many years ago by Peter Norton, this year’s recipient of the IPI-Award.
The IPI-Award is made annually to an individual who has made outstanding contribution to the development of patent information. Peter Norton, a former director of Derwent (now Thomson Reuters), was instrumental in the design and development of the chemical fragmentation system, the polymer coding system and the Derwent Manual code classification system. All these are still used daily by patent information professionals worldwide to improve the precision and recall of their searches in Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI).
In celebration of this award, Peter Norton's contribution to the development of patent information retrieval is reviewed here.
Early days
To understand the importance of his work, consider how patent information was managed before universal coding systems were developed. Efforts were piecemeal with each individual company using bespoke systems particular to their own activities and needs. There was much overlap and duplication of effort in developing, maintaining and operating these individual proprietary systems. In addition, these individual systems were not transferable to a wider application since they were developed to serve the individual needs of each company.
Peter Norton recognized this situation and on behalf of a collection of 35 customers, in 1962, he developed the first draft of the Derwent Pharmaceutical Code, an 80-column punched card retrieval system which was simple to apply to patents and easy for subscribers to use. The new code allowed each part of a chemical structure to be indexed and retrieved, hence the expression 'fragmentation code'. This made it relatively easy to apply to the generic (or Markush) formulae encountered in patents.
As a result of this work, Norton was invited to join Derwent full time in 1963. The initial version of the fragmentation code was completed during 1963 and was subsequently extended to include chemical patents relating to agriculture, such as pesticides, animal feeds and drugs, and fertilisers. Later developments included the adaptation of a specialised coding system for polymer chemicals into the Plasdoc coding system.
During this time, Norton was responsible for the development of an associated retrieval system, the Derwent Manual Codes. This system provided an alternative to the IPC offering detailed classifications describing functional aspects of inventions across chemistry. Classification was arranged into 12 sections (A-M) covering chemical technology such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, food, detergents, and general chemicals.
New Chemical Code
With the advent of online searching in 1976 when the Derwent files were loaded onto the SDC-Orbit online service, the reliance on the 80 column punched card format for a coding system was removed. This provided the opportunity to vastly modify and enhance the fragmentation code and during 1978-1981, Norton worked to develop the New Chemical Code. This was applicable to all references in Pharmaceuticals, Agrochemicals and General Chemicals and involved over 2700 new codes with the format of a letter followed by 3 digits. This form of the fragmentation code is still used today.
In addition to the New Chemical Code, a system of applying numbers to specific compounds of importance to the chemical industry was also started in 1981. About 2100 compounds were assigned Derwent Registry Numbers or RNs. These were applied to compounds appearing in the claims or examples of a patent specification.
Following the success of the New Chemical Code, a similar system was developed for Plastics and Polymers whereby the punched-codes were replaced by 4-digit index terms.
In addition to creating the indexing systems, Norton also developed User Manuals and training materials to enable customers to use the systems to retrieve relevant information. Not only did he create the materials, but he travelled widely in Europe, the US and Japan training users in both public and private workshops over a number of years. Peter Norton was an excellent trainer. His training covered the two most important aspects essential to successful understanding and use of indexing systems: how patents were indexed and how they should be searched.
Graphical structure searching
Despite the success of the New Chemical Code, Derwent continued to look for further ways of improving chemical structure retrieval. To this end, Norton started in 1983 to investigate the possibilities for full topological input of Markush structures and the subsequent searching of these structures. 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) involving travel to Paris for full day meetings most weeks during 1984 to 1986.
In 1986, the Markush DARC input software was finalized and testing of graphic input of Pharmaceuticals, Agrochemicals and General Chemicals began. Full graphics indexing of all references in these areas commenced in 1987 and the graphics search system became available as WPIM in 1989. Norton left Derwent in 1989 but continued to act in a consultancy role in further development of the Markush DARC system until his retirement in 1995. He still maintains contact with old friends and colleagues and can be relied upon to appear each year to swap stories and distribute Christmas cards at the annual Online show in London.
Conclusion
It is difficult to estimate the impact of Peter Norton's work on the countless professional patent searchers all over the world who have benefitted from the coding systems he developed, but it is certain that their ability to serve their companies has been significantly enhanced by his contributions described here. We are grateful to the IPI-Award selection committee for recognizing this contribution and add our congratulations to those of patent information professionals around the world to Peter Norton in achieving this deserved recognition.
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