Trade Secret Protection and ELNs

By Simon Coles | Published: September 3, 2010

A good ELN can protect a company’s Intellectual Property in a variety of ways aside from the traditional role of creating and preserving evidence to be used in a Patent action.

I don’t know the details of the specific case but this recent legal case where an employee stole trade secrets before leaving for a competitor brings up another way.

Specifically, if they had been using PatentSafe:

  • Every read of a document would have been logged
  • The Custodian’s Console would have alerted management to unusual activity
  • Users would know they were accountable for the company’s secrets

The last of those is most important. If people know they are accountable this would never have happened at all – the scientist wouldn’t have been tempted, the company wouldn’t have had to prosecute, lots of money would have been saved and a prison sentence avoided.

Posted in Happenings, Industry, Legal | Leave a comment

Flexibility and power

By Simon Coles | Published: August 12, 2010

Brent Simmons draws out the difference between Flexibility Vs Power in software:

Flexibility is the ability to change how software works; power is the ability to do more with less effort

Historically we have been sucked into believing that “Flexibility = Power” and the complexity of most ELNs shows the result. As Brent mentions, iOS and the like are causing us to understand that the benefits come from Power – that’s how we deliver the return on investment. Flexibility can distract from that.

I suspect in the future we’ll see a lot more focused, powerful systems which allow us to concentrate on the job in hand rather than having to figure out how to configure all the flexibility we thought we wanted.

When you add a new App to your iPad/iPhone you are generally up and running within seconds. Imagine if that was the user experience for ELNs…

Posted in ELN Design, Industry | 2 Comments

ELNs in the Laboratory – iPad Vs Ruggedised Tablet

By Simon Coles | Published: August 6, 2010

The Electronic Lab Notebook’s last frontier for the is the laboratory bench, and historically companies have explored a variety of solutions although I don’t think anyone would claim to have the perfect solution yet.

Comparing a recent ruggedised tablet with an iPad shows why the iPad is so interesting for accessing an ELN from the benchtop.

The latest PC Pro magazine has a review of the Motion Computing J3500 which is a ruggedised PC with a touch screen which I guess would be one of the devices you might consider if you wanted a PC in the lab. At £2,253 (ex VAT) it isn’t cheap, battery life is just over 4 hours, and it is going to take a lot of bench space.

Compare that to an iPad which is £365 (ex VAT), a battery that will last most if not all of the day, much more portable, doesn’t take up nearly as much space on the benchtop and can be placed in a protective plastic bag if desired.

The difference in price, form factor and battery life is stark, and I suspect the iPad will be a lot cheaper to manage from an IT perspective. Given the move to web-based systems I can’t see there’s much the iPad is missing in terms of functionality either.

And that is why we’re excited about the iPad…. and it is too small to be used as a tray which is a concern with Tablet PCs!

Posted in Benchtop, ELN Design | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Conference organisers and people count

By Simon Coles | Published: August 4, 2010

Tim Bray comments on Conference Organisers and the number of attendees they claim…

When conference organizers count people, the number they care about most is registered paying attendees; they track that every day as the conference approaches. Suppose you are an outsider, considering attending or sponsoring or exhibiting at the conference, and you inquire as to the likely attendance. You will never be given the real number; instead you will be told a number which is at least twice that, and usually higher. This is justified by including trade-show exhibitors’ staff, the conference organizer’s own people, PR folk and journalists, the food service crew, and is basically pulled out of a monkey’s butt. Just thought you’d like to know.

Yup.

When a delegate ticket is the price of a small PatentSafe installation, and vendors pay over $10k to even turn up and give a “talk”…

There has to be a better way for the industry to talk to each other.

Posted in Industry | Leave a comment

Our PatentSafe Electronic Lab Notebook in a growing Biotech

By Simon Coles | Published: August 3, 2010

4-Antibody have successfully rolled out our PatentSafe Electronic Lab Notebook, demonstrating the flexibility and power has in a growing Biotech.

I must admit some frustration with the process of Press Releasing new customers. Unlike most suppliers we tend to press release after a successful implementation (e.g. pilot, decision to go forward, roll out – and then we press release), and we also don’t press release everything. So it tends to be a while after we’ve got the project in and successful before we can talk about it, but it does mean when we do go public it is with something that’s solid.

We’ve just issued a press release on 4-Antibody’s use of PatentSafe (story on PRWeb here) and what’s interesting to me is that 4-Antibody, as a growing Biotech, needed to have a solution which allowed them as much flexibility and future-proofing as possible whilst giving them good IP protection.

Here’s the customer quote:

4-Antibody were looking to replace their paper based system but had some definite ideas about how any new electronic system would need to work for them. Marc van Dijk, Chief Technology Officer for 4-Antibody explained “It was very important for us that a new electronic lab notebook should not impose restrictions on us in the way that we work”. 4-Antibody evaluated several possible ELNs (Electronic Lab Notebooks) and chose to implement Amphora’s PatentSafe system, because according to van Dijk “Amphora seemed to offer the most flexible system which allowed us to do what we wanted to do in terms of workflow”.

But of course, you still need to stitch your systems together and keep things straight – always a challenge but particularly important in growing companies:

The system can also be simply integrated with other R&D applications, which was important to 4-Antibody because they plan in the future to implement these types of links. Van Dijk said that 4-Antibody aim to use PatentSafe as “one searchable database connecting all our R&D records, linking to our LIMS system” and he continued, “this will allow scientists and management to quickly see everything that is going on across R&D”.

This was one of the projects I was personally involved in, and it was a real pleasure to work with them – great bunch of people. They have a mix of Apple MacOS X machines as well as Windows PCs which meant the cross platform nature of PatentSafe really helped too.

This project was also my introduction to the Basel Fasnacht. We did think it was a little strange when we found the hotels were booked up, and you can imagine how we felt when we kept tripping over brass bands and people in scary costumes! Next time I’ll take the decent camera.

Posted in Happenings | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
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