New STN® Revolutionizes Patent Searching for Professionals

COLUMBUS, Ohio and KARLSRUHE, Germany, October 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Redesigned STN retains what customers value most while phasing in advanced search and analysis capabilities beginning in 2012

The STN partners, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) in the U.S. and FIZ Karlsruhe in Germany, are pleased to announce that a completely new STN will be phased into the market beginning in 2012.    

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The new platform will bring improved efficiency and usability at the expert level. Powerful new elements will include:

• Project-oriented workflow,
• Combined text and structure queries,
• Simultaneous query and results interaction,
• Real-time analysis of results, and
• Virtually no system limits.

"While New STN will offer a wide range of advancements, it will retain the unique values of STN that are trusted by patent search professionals today, including the STN command line, search precision and high-quality content," said Sabine Brunger-Weilandt, President and CEO of FIZ Karlsruhe.  

"Our focus on patent professionals also encompasses the STN commitment to a secure and confidential research environment, as well as training and support by our scientists, which will be hallmarks of the new system," said Robert J. Massie, President of CAS.

Teams of information technology professionals at FIZ Karlsruhe and CAS have designed and developed the new system with active guidance and insights from a global customer advisory council. "It is exciting to be part of the development process of the new STN platform," stated Dr. Mark Harper, patent information analyst at Sanofi and member of the STN Advisory Council. "The new system will greatly improve efficiency when searching STN, resulting from improved workflow support for patent experts."

An alpha release to the STN Advisory Council is planned for later this year, and a release to global STN fixed fee customers will follow in 2012. The initial customer release will comprise the core databases of CAS and Thomson Reuters, a number of full-text patent files, and a suite of critical features and functions. Subsequent releases will be enhanced with additional databases and functionality.

The current STN system, including STN Express and STN on the Web, will continue to be available and fully supported throughout the development of the new platform.

Related links
http://www.cas.org/products/stnfamily/index.html
http://www.stn-international.de

About STN

STN® is the search tool that patent experts including the world's major patent offices depend on for precision searching and comprehensive, timely and high-quality coverage of science and intellectual property information. STN provides access to more than 170 databases and is the premier single source for the world's disclosed scientific and technical research. STN databases can be accessed through STN Express®, STN® on the Web(SM) and STN Easy®. STN is operated jointly by CAS and FIZ Karlsruhe worldwide and is represented in Japan by JAICI.

About CAS

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, is the world's authority for chemical information. Our databases are curated and quality-controlled by CAS scientists and recognized by chemical and pharmaceutical companies, universities, government organizations and patent offices around the world as authoritative. By combining these databases with advanced search and analysis technologies (SciFinder®, STN® and Science IP®), CAS delivers the most current, complete and cross-linked secure digital information environment for scientific discovery. Learn more at http://www.cas.org.

About FIZ Karlsruhe

FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure is a not-for-profit organization with the public mission to make sci-tech information from all over the world publicly available and to provide related services in order to support the national and international transfer of knowledge and the promotion of innovation.

Our business areas:

• STN International - the world's leading online service for research and patent information in science and technology
• KnowEsis - innovative eScience solutions to support the process of research in all its stages, and throughout all scientific disciplines
• Databases and Information Services - databases and science portals in mathematics, computer science, crystallography, chemistry and energy technology

FIZ Karlsruhe is a member of the Leibniz Association (WGL) which consists of 87 German research and infrastructure institutions. Additional information is available at http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de.