Regular readers may remember IWR's coverage last year from the Information Retrieval Facility Symposium in Vienna. It was all about bringing together Information Retrieval and Patent specialists in order to deal with the complex search issues that dog the industry. In part this is due to the sheer volume being generated each year, written in a variety of languages. Also, the tricky and evasive nature of how patent filings are constructed is always there in the background.

As I catch up before the symposium opens up officially, hosts, Matrixware, are currently running sessions on IP for IR and IR for IP specialists. Practice sessions to see what delegates have learnt during the day have just started. I'll be sure to ask fellow delegates what they thought having now had the chance to sit on the other side of the fence.

Proceedings kick off tomorrow at 9am with the opening sessions discussing the information retrieval challenges facing researchers in an increasingly multi-lingual patent world. More then...