1948 - A Family At Work

When Monty Hyams, research chemist, became patents manager at Pyrene, he found the work fascinating; however, there wasn't much of it and the pay was mediocre. So, during his visits to the British Patent Office, he identified passages of particular interest in chemical patents. The line numbers were passed on to his father, a retired tailor, who transcribed the passages in neat longhand. Monty used the transcriptions to create expert abstracts which were typed, duplicated and dispatched in a weekly bulletin called the British Chemical Patents Report.

The Day That Dow Dropped By

Soon, there were 100 subscribers to the British Chemical Patents Report and Monty was earning more than his salary at Pyrene - enough that he could pay for other specialists to cover patents in countries like Australia, which published few patents, but did so rapidly. By concentrating on inventions of key interest to drug companies, he attracted business interest. Soon, revenues from his Pharmaceutical Patents Journal were enough to pay for the coverage of Germany and Soviet Union patents.

By day, Monty was deepening his knowledge by working for a patent agent, but the night job progressively took over. During the early 1950s, he switched to part-time, and then took the plunge into full self-employment. Clerical work was carried out by his wife, Valerie, and other helpers from their home - a small suburban house which the previous owners had dignified with the name Derwent. Overhead costs were low. One day, a customer from Dow Chemicals dropped by from America. He was very surprised to find such homely surroundings since, by that time, the company's work had evolved to secure the confidence of the Dow representative and that of subscribers like himself.

Brussels Breakthrough

By 1955, Derwent covered the chemical patents of most major countries. Monty was wondering how to develop his business further when he was made aware of a situation which was not widely recognised: there was another country which published patents earlier than the two year delay period of most countries and, moreover, it published chemical patents in significant quantities. This country was Belgium. No one had exploited this opportunity because of the formidable difficulties involved - only one copy of each patent was available. This one copy had to be inspected at the Patent Office in Brussels in just one working day. Sensing the commercial potential, Monty took on this abstracting challenge in person. Acceptance of his proposal was slow at first: people wondered "why Belgium?" However, some of the early disclosures out of Belgium, like the Ziegler process and the hovercraft, were so newsworthy that they were picked up by the popular press. With this free advertising, sales soared and the need for Derwent's coverage of Belgium patent documents became apparent.

Searchable Solutions

By 1962, in the drug industry alone, Derwent had abstracted over a quarter of a million patents for the Pharmaceutical Patents Journal, but customers had no way to search this accumulated content. A solution of punched cards with holes denoting chemical structures was devised. You could mechanically search for these patterns, then read the abstracts printed on the cards. This created the potential for a state-of-the art documentation and retrieval service, but the costs involved would be forty times higher than the Pharmaceutical Patents Journal. This caused alarm. Subscriptions were still below the break-even figure of 30. However, Monty strategically announced that, because of handling difficulties, sales of the new pharmaceutical patent service, Farmdoc, would unfortunately be limited to the first 50 subscribers. There was a remarkable, sudden influx of subscription interest. Monty had to turn people away. This led to accusations of unfair trading. Reluctantly, Monty backed down.

With Farmdoc, and the addition of value-added services for agrochemical and polymer patents, Derwent made the transition from a publishing house into a full-fledged information company. There were proper offices too by now, in Central London.

Diversification

Farmdoc made such an impact that customers were eager for a companion service covering journal literature - an area in which Derwent had absolutely no experience. Fortunately, two consortium services were already operating - one between 12 companies mainly from Germany, and the other between two Swiss companies. Both services were more than happy for Derwent to take over for them - they even made their backlogs available. A system combining the best features of both was designed, staff were recruited and given specialist training, and the new service, Ringdoc, was launched in 1964. Similar services soon followed for pesticide and veterinary literature, and plans were announced for patent documentation services in other specialised areas.

A Customer-led Revolution

A powerful lobby headed by a collaboration of 12 European Chemical companies, The Patent Documentation Group, and US corporations including DuPont, Dow Chemical and Eastman Kodak, insisted that what they really wanted was not a number of separate efforts, but one overall service covering the chemical industry in a uniform manner.

So the Subscribers themselves drove the way for the development of Central Patents Index, a modular service which each of the organisations could tailor to their in-house business needs. A high basic subscription charge for any of the 12 sections gave the right to as many booklets, microform and tape products as they liked, which were supplied virtually at Derwent's cost for internal distribution. In 1970, a generation before the development of intranets, this was quite revolutionary. Within a few years, coverage of patents was extended to embrace all technology, not just chemical, and the name was changed from Central Patents Index to World Patents Index.

Online Pioneer

In the 1970s, the backlog of patent information was made computer-readable in order for subscribers to receive the data on magnetic tape. The already enormous volumes of data made searching frustratingly slow. The advent of online search services had perfect timing for Derwent: in 1976, Derwent became one of the first information providers to go up on the SDC ORBIT service.

Derwent insisted on funding the cost of online file development, update and storage. Later, Derwent agreed to allow DIALOG to also host its data on a similar basis. Right up to the days of self-publishing on the Internet, Derwent remained almost unique in maintaining such a degree of control of its online data.

The 1990s

Derwent's searchable archive from 1963 (Derwent World Patents Index (Derwent WPI)), global in scope and comprehensively indexed, remained a strength unmatched, covering 40 patent-issuing authorities and containing details of over eight million separate inventions.

Derwent also broadened its product range to enable customers to select from a range of industry-focused products that facilitated easy browsing of current awareness and competitor information in specific fields. Derwent also created tailor-made packages of information focused on particular industry, technology or competitor groups, and expanded their portfolio of patent search, delivery and translation services.

With the advent of in-house information systems, Derwent introduced intranet and Lotus Domino solutions designed to enable companies to get the maximum benefit from hosting Derwent's value-added data internally. And in 1998 they launched their first web interface - Derwent Discovery - which provided internet access to Derwent's pharmaceutical current awareness and drug development information. A number of new interfaces followed, including Derwent Innovations Index which merges patent information from Derwent World Patents Index with patent citation information.

Into the new millennium

From 2000 onwards, the Derwent databases were increasingly integrated with others from the Thomson Scientific group of businesses, covering 41 countries and enabling customers to conduct comprehensive searches of patent, industry standards, scientific and technical information on internet and in-house platforms.