For Immediate Release
June 14, 2004

Analyze That: Text-mining Software Gains Momentum in the Competitive-Intelligence Market

A technology-transfer success story, VantagePoint is generating its first royalties to Georgia Tech. Although initially modest -- less than $10,000 in 2003 -- royalties are expected to increase significantly with a new version of the text-mining software.

Graphical representation produced by VantagePoint shows the relationships between key concepts. Illustration Courtesy of Alan Porter

Developed through a strategic alliance between Georgia Tech and Atlanta-based Search Technology Inc., VantagePoint allows technical-intelligence managers to quickly analyze search results from bibliographic databases and R&D literature. The text-mining tool produces summaries, charts and graphs that help people spot patterns and relationships in massive amounts of data, enabling them to extract relevant information and make better decisions.

Macro view in minutes

Competitive technical intelligence is the name of the game, says Alan Porter, a Georgia Tech professor of industrial and systems engineering and public policy who developed the technology that resulted in VantagePoint.

“Today it’s critical to have the right technology at the right time,” Porter explains. “Companies want to keep an eye on competitors so they don’t drop the ball by introducing a new product or technology too late. For example, Ford looks to see what is published by and about Toyota – and more important, what it’s patenting, because that shows what Toyota is really interested in.”

In addition to staying a step ahead of rivals, VantagePoint also assists with technology management and R&D efforts by helping:

• Identify what inventors are up to, along with the organizations sponsoring their research -- information that can lead to potential mergers or acquisitions.
• Uncover licensing opportunities.
• Pinpoint patent infringements.
• Track and forecast trends in specific technology areas.
• Identify new technologies or new venues to apply existing technologies.

In contrast to other text-mining tools, VantagePoint is specifically designed to interpret search results from science and technology databases. What’s more, where other tools rely on artificial intelligence, VantagePoint uses statistical algorithms to sort through large amounts of data and help people see the big picture more easily. This can be a particular advantage for someone who is navigating through unfamiliar waters.

“VantagePoint allows information to self-organize, making it easier to digest,” explains Nils Newman, who helped develop the software as a graduate student and research analyst at Georgia Tech and now serves as Search Technology’s director of new business development. “VantagePoint gives you a table of contents where a table of contents didn’t exist before.”

That’s especially important today as the pressure increases for technology managers to review more information, Newman adds: “With the right databases and a few keystrokes, you have access to fantastic amounts of information. Yet while the amount of data has grown dramatically in the past few decades, the speed at which people can read hasn’t really changed.”

Newman recalls one technical-intelligence manager who spent a week scrutinizing 3,000 patent abstracts for a project. Using VantagePoint, she could have gleaned what she needed in 30 minutes.

In addition to saving time, VantagePoint can also lead to serendipitous discoveries.

Case in point: Bob Watts, senior engineer at the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM), was interested in ceramic-engine technology for military equipment. By using TechOASIS (the government version of VantagePoint) to research ceramic engines, Watts quickly saw this technology hadn’t matured enough for his purposes.

Yet the software pointed Watts to a related technology that was more advanced: ceramic coatings. This led TACOM to establish a program using thermal spray coatings to rebuild worn engine and vehicle components. This thermal spray equipment has been installed in an Army depot to reduce overhaul costs of military vehicles. “The actual savings vary per component, but it’s usually pretty significant,” Watts says, noting that a torsion arm on a combat vehicle track system can be repaired for one-tenth the cost of a new part.

A decade of diligence

An unusual partnership between Georgia Tech, industry and government, VantagePoint’s roots trace back to 1993.

That summer, Porter and his son Doug, a computer science student at Virginia Tech, were looking at ways to improve forecasting of technology trends. Porter continued the project at the Technology Policy and Assessment Center (TPAC), a multidisciplinary center that he co-directs at Georgia Tech.

The resulting software tool led to an invention disclosure and caught the interest of Search Technology, a private company in Norcross, Ga., which provides research and analytical tools to help people manage complex information.

“The technology was attractive to us because it was of a sufficient size, complexity and maturity from which we could build and market a product,” says Paul Frey, Search Technology’s president.

Search Technology licensed the technology from Georgia Tech in 1996. With funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through the federal government’s Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program, Search Technology and Georgia Tech began refining the text-mining software for the military, which resulted in TechOASIS.

VantagePoint, the commercial version of the software, was officially launched in 2000 and is now being used in 10 countries.

Until VantagePoint, Search Technology’s revenue stemmed mostly from its R&D services. Yet software sales have made a significant contribution to company coffers, increasing annual revenue by about 50 percent, Frey says.

VantagePoint is also an important success for Georgia Tech for the commercialization of university research is typically an uphill battle.

Indeed, according to a study from the University of Pennsylvania, $200 billion worth of government research funding to universities during a one-year period resulted in 100,000 invention disclosures. Yet only 50,000 of those disclosures led to patent applications. And only 125 innovations – less than 1 percent of invention disclosures -- generated royalties of more than $1 million for their respective universities.

Part of the problem is that companies must follow very specific parameters when developing a product or service for the government, points out Kevin Wozniak, former associate director of Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing. “Taking a government application and trying to target a broader market is a big challenge.”

Wozniak, who recently left Georgia Tech to become director of technology licensing at Georgia State University, praises Search Technology for being farsighted and “meeting the needs of the original customer – the military – while developing the product to meet the needs of potential industry users.”

Porter’s continued involvement has been another key factor in VantagePoint’s success, he adds. “Although Georgia Tech is very supportive of technology transfer, faculty must make an effort to actively participate in the process. They can’t just file an invention disclosure, then walk away and expect commercialization to happen,” Wozniak explains. “Alan has been a real champion of the technology and continued to work on the project even after the licensing agreement was signed.”

A year ago, Search Technology introduced a new version of VantagePoint: Derwent Analytics™, which is designed especially to use with the Derwent World Patent Index from Thomson Derwent, a subsidiary of information powerhouse Thomson Corp.

Because of Thomson’s vast distribution channels, this new release has the potential to reach an even larger number of people than the original software. “With that in mind, we’re anticipating that VantagePoint will become one of the larger generators of royalties for Georgia Tech,” says Wozniak.

RESEARCH NEWS & PUBLICATIONS OFFICE
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 100
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA

MEDIA RELATIONS CONTACTS: John Toon (404-894-6986); E-mail: (john.toon@edi.gatech.edu); Fax: (404-894-4545) or Jane Sanders (404-894-2214); E-mail: (jane.sanders@edi.gatech.edu).

TECHNICAL CONTACT: Alan Porter (404-894-2330); E-mail: (alan.porter@isye.gatech.edu).

WRITER: T.J. Becker