Civil but assertive in Moscow (1974)

Context is all in the case of a talk by Monty in October 1974, on the topic of: Abstracting, indexing and retrieval of the information content in patent documents.

Who better placed to give such a talk one might think? Derwent had that very year launched World Patents Index. And that service could hardly be unknown to those at an international symposium on The role of patent information in research and development. Could it?

DWPI was indeed already in wide use not only within industry but national patent offices also. But it was delegates from the latter -- and from the governmental sector in general -- who predominated at this Moscow event, organised by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Further context is that the launch of DWPI had followed fruitless attempts for a cooperative initiative with WIPO or the embryonic Inpadoc bureau in Vienna. As it seemed to Monty anyway, the public sector had declined to play ball with the private on any terms, insisting on organising its own show, in its own more leisurely timeframe. And was still largely in the realms of fine talk only.

That's the background then to why the major extant service provider in this area (Derwent) was scheduled by WIPO to sit out the first four days of this five-day event, emerging only at the 26th of 29 presentations.

Monty's opening and closing remarks -- before and after his prepared presentation on WPI -- may be understood in the light of that context. He is scrupulously polite, but stands up for Derwent, quite sparkily. 

These remarks (with the presentation itself omitted) can be downloaded as a PDF file here.

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