Touchbase 9th may 16.45pm

TouchBase Latest product updates and news from Minesoft
All our latest news:
New coverage in PatBase PatBase tools upgrade
Chemical Explorer enhancements
Issue 17 Summer 2018


Welcome to TouchBase Summer 2018
Bringing you the latest news about PatBase and other Minesoft products and events
IN THIS EDITION
CONTENTS
PatBase news
PatBase tools get upgraded
New enhancements to PatBase
Searching for Chinese patents and utility models in PatBase
Tips and tricks for PatBase users Chemical Explorer news
Chemical Explorer coverage expanded R-Group table searching now available Enhanced similarity searching
Easy export of chemical data from Chemical Explorer to Excel
Chemical name preference updates Brand-new chemical search history
A brief exploration of PatBase Analytics V2 Minesoft news
Revamped Minesoft support
New appointments
International office updates
Captured moments
Upcoming conferences
Page 3 Page 4-5
Page 6 Page 7
Page 8 Page 9 Page 9 Page 10 Page 10
Page 11
Page 12 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17-18 Page 19
We highlight the latest enhancements to the Minesoft Toolbox. Keep reading to find out more about the new version of Snapshot, enhancements to Citation Explorer and the improved Legal Status Viewer.
Recently, we have doubled the number of manually translated Chinese patent assignee names indexed in PatBase! Find out more about how we have been working to expand our presence in China on page 8.
In other news, Minesoft Support has been revamped with new services, including PatBasics, a website to help new users get accustomed to PatBase. We’re also happy to announce that Rahman Hyatt, Director at Minesoft, is celebrating 20 years at the company this Spring!
Later this year, watch out for our exciting new product launch: PatDocs! The ideal solution for speedy search and review for all US patent documents with integrated, global PatentOrder.
Why not sign up for one of our European PatBase training courses to sharpen your PatBase search skills and keep up-to-date with new functionality? We would love to see you there and at events we are attending around the world in 2018.
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NEWS
New coverage in PatBase
Data enhancements
Minesoft has significantly enhanced the data included within our suite of patent solutions so that our users have access to the most comprehensive set of high quality patent data within the industry.
The full text patent coverage in PatBase and PatBase Express has been increased to over 50 authorities, with the addition of:
Design patents are another important type of intellectual property and PatBase already covers design patents from the following countries:
At Minesoft, we understand how important the quality of patent data is to create a complete and accurate picture of the IP landscape. Every week we enhance the data in all of our products, making thousands of error corrections and adding additional data and quality, where needed.
• China
• San Marino • India
• Canada
• Cuba
• Guatemala • Brazil
• Ecuador
• USA
• Israel
• Taiwan
• Costa Rica
• Dominican Republic • Honduras
• Chile
• Uruguay
• Argentina
• Cuba
• Dominican Republic • South Africa
• Poland
• Singapore • Uruguay
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PatBase tools get upgraded!
Snapshot
Snapshot Citation Explorer Legal Status Viewer
Snapshot
A new, quick snapshot analysis option has been added to PatBase, offering easy to understand visualisations that provide a reliable overview of the patenting field.
Following the success of our comprehensive Analytics module, we identified an opportunity for a new entry point for our users into Patent Statistical Analysis.
Building on the lessons learned and following many of the same rules and targets we set ourselves for PatBase Analytics V2, we developed Snapshot.
A quick, easy but accurate and feature-rich ‘snapshot’ of your search data.
Snapshot is an ideal tool for end-users. The module samples up to 2000 results from a dataset and runs a quick analysis to produce an accurate visual representation of the
search query. Analysis is available for legal status, company, technology area and jurisdiction. Users can toggle between bar chart, pie chart or table view; custom options are available. Clean up your results set by activating the useful grouping functionality. It’s possible to group together inventors, assignees, classification codes or jurisdictions. For example, you could group together Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark as “Nordics”.
The powerful and interactive interface revolutionises searching on the platform. Users can drill-down into the visualisations to re-run selections in PatBase, gaining a deeper insight into a search. If a more in-depth analysis is required, it is simple and quick to connect to PatBase AnalyticsV2 through the Snapshot module.
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Citation Explorer
Exploring forward citations yields an excellent source of competitive business intelligence. You can quickly identify players working in a similar technology area, new competitors entering your field, potential licensing opportunities and keep an eye on potential infringers in the sea of data.
Citation Explorer is a comprehensive citation database included as a module in PatBase; it is a useful tool to locate, browse and review patent citations on the PatBase platform.
Incorporating the latest customer feedback has led to Minesoft further enhancing Citation Explorer. A new methodology to effectively track backward and forward citations for a family of interest makes
Legal Status Viewer
Legal Status is a hot topic at Minesoft!
We are setting a new standard for comprehensive Legal Status data in the online patent information industry; combining data directly from European, American and Japanese National Patent Offices, as well as, global legal status data from the PatBase data feeds.
Minesoft has updated the Legal Status Viewer in PatBase and PatBase Express. The Timeline & Table options have a streamlined design and convenient export tools, making it ideal and easy to share with colleagues and/or clients.
In addition, the Priority Relationship diagram makes it simple to spot how patents within a
life easier. Citations can be displayed by various criteria, allowing users to get an easy overview, cross-reference related citations and discover their origins.
The Citation Tree now shows forward and backward citations simultaneously. Making it simpler to extrapolate and draw conclusions. Users can quickly identify which patents are being cited by or citing the invention of interest.
Hover over the publication number to quickly scan the title, assignee and excerpt of the abstract.
family are related by priority number, again, this is easy to export and share throughout the company (even with non-PatBase users!).
Another time-saving functionality is the ability to show calculated expiry dates for each country. The calculated expiry dates do the hard work for you, taking into account not just the different patent terms for each country and type of document, but also additional information (where available), e.g. Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) and Patent Term Extensions (PTEs).
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New enhancements to PatBase
NPO data enabled for PatBase legal status alerts (ULG)
Legal status alerts in PatBase now include data from the USPTO and Japanese National Patent Office. This has been combined with comprehensive INPADOC data from the European Patent Office and other global legal status data from the PatBase data feeds.
PatBase folder shortcuts enhanced
It is now possible to open up to 10 folders at a time when working with folders in PatBase. You can add a folder to your shortcuts by clicking the symbol*.
The selected folders will be visible below the family ribbon bar.
Coverage page & Number format page
The PatBase Coverage pages have been completely revamped with an interface more in keeping with the rest of the system. The coverage pages now feature several filter options and search boxes. Users can isolate countries of interest to them, find data on specific document types and switch easily between European and American date formats when reviewing the coverage entries. National flags have also been added for the covered jurisdictions.
The Number format look-up page has also been enhanced, again with a search feature and flag icons for each jurisdiction.
*Symbol
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Searching for Chinese patents and utility models in PatBase
Between 2006 and 2016, the number of patent applications has increased from 0.890 million to 2.019 million, this spike in applications has created many challenges within the industry.
It is more important than ever to be able to provide large amounts of information quickly and reliably, and to ensure that we can provide quality machine translation. Since the end of 2017, we have been using new self-learning systems for machine translations in cooperation with our partner RWS. This “Neural MT Framework” captures the meaning of the text instead of recognising only consecutive words in a sentence. As a result, the translations are timely and of ever- improving quality. (We also use this machine translation system for other languages, such as Japanese, Korean and Russian.)
Wicks, Business Development Manager at the forefront of Minesoft’s expansion into the Chinese market. “Hence, since 2013, we have provided a full Chinese interface for PatBase to improve the search experience for Chinese users. This, combined with powerful non-Latin search functionalities and high-quality machine translations, has made Chinese patent information more readily available worldwide.”
The large number of patent applications coming from China is also a symptom of
the increasing interest in international patent information there. Hence, the demand for PatBase data has grown significantly over recent years. The commercial subsidiary of the Chinese Patent Office – the Intellectual Property Publishing House (IPPH) – will be supplying our products in China as our
new distributor. IPPH has established itself as a leading provider of Chinese patent information products and solutions. The addition of IPPH to our network alongside RWS, the Minesoft China staff and Hengcheng Intelligence Solutions
will expand our presence in the
important Chinese market and
expand our customer base
worldwide.
In addition, using RWS’s worldwide expertise in the field of scientific and patent documents, we are able to accurately translate names of patent assignees (patent owners, usually company names) from non-Latin languages. Recently, the number of manually translated Chinese patent assignee names has been doubled to 40,000, this has been applied to
all historic data and is automatically applied to any new data that we receive.
“From the outset, Minesoft has focussed on not only the scope and quality of coverage in PatBase, but also its accessibility.” Says James
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Tips & tricks for PatBase users
Mélanie Bridier and Diana Broomby from the Minesoft Support team share some of their top tips & tricks for PatBase users!
Tip 1
Sort your family table to your own preference
Tip 4 Find out more information about patent number formats
On the right-hand side of your screen from your “Search history” page, under the “Information”
tab, you will find the search tool “Patent number formats”. This can be used to look up country code and number formats, kind codes or publication types for a specific country.
This option is available under the “Display/search options” - found under the “Menu” tab in PatBase. Go to “Sort family table by” and select custom order. You can now create your own sort order list with the countries you want to see first on the family table and in the View/Browse full text view.
Find only granted patents from within a result set
Simply combine GRANT=YES with any search.
For example:
1. TAC=(motor and crane). 2. 1 AND (GRANT=YES)
Tip 5 Erase your last search query or comment
To erase the last search query or comment from your search history. Type the letter “u” in the command line and press “Search”.
Tip 2
If you wish to find families that do not contain a grant, do not use GRANT=NO as this will bring up all the granted patents from Norway (NO). Instead, simply combine a GRANT=YES search with the NOT command together with another search, as follows:
Tip 6
Searching Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data in PatBase
1. TAC=(motor and crane). 2. 1 NOT (GRANT=YES) Tip 3 Add comments to your
FDA data is searchable in PatBase. To search this data, use the command FDA=YES or alternatively, search by each field, i.e.: FDA=(active ingredient), FDA=(applicant name), FDA=(application number), FDA=(proprietary name)
Search history
Add comments to your “Search history” page by adding //comment here// in the command line and then press “Search”. This will display your comment as a search query.
The FDA data will appear in either the “Full” view (below the family table) or “Classic” view (after the abstract and before the class code information).
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expanded
Over the past 6 months, we have worked to enhance the data included within Chemical Explorer. Users can now extract critical chemical information from the full text of patents from 15 countries, including:
• Australia • China
• Germany • Spain
• Israel • Japan • Korea • US
• France • UK
• India
• Russia
• East Germany • Soviet Union
One of the biggest issues in examining chemical information in patents has always involved searching chemical names from
Chemical Explorer News
Chemical Explorer coverage
non-Latin documents, due to the differences in the way certain chemical terms are written and confusion around the way in which translation rules should be applied.
Hence, the Minesoft Development team has worked to significantly enhance the non-Latin data included within Chemical Explorer with the addition of Russian patents. We have expanded the index coverage to include non-Latin PCT documents and systematic names written in Russian, including patents from the following authorities: Russia (RU), Soviet Union (SU), East Germany (DD).
The system is now more comprehensive than ever, covering patents written in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German and Russian.
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R-Group table searching now available!
With no extra user effort required, in cases where a chemical structure is described by combining a specified structure with an R-group table the document will now be found in all US patents published from 2001 onwards. These structures, that are neither expressed by a single chemical image or chemical name, are frequently omitted by
1. Input your query into the chemical structure drawing tool
naïve chemical indexing of the patent literature.
This advancement will allow users to accumulate more relevant hits with their searches without sacrificing the specificity of their queries, keeping noise to a minimum.
2. Your query molecule is used to interrogate the database against discloses of the entity by name, image (US only) and R-group tables across PatBase's stock of 120 million global publications
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Enhanced Similarity Searching
Chemical entities are often disclosed in scientific literature several years after they appear in patent documentation. Therefore, ignoring patents as a source of prior art can at best delay innovation and at worst result in lost R&D revenue wasted on projects that transpire to be unpatentable.
for similar molecules to the queried chemical with an easy-to-use similarity threshold that can expand or contract the number of results returned. Using an advanced algorithm, the similarity search functionality identifies similar chemical structures. Results are displayed in order of similarity and each compound will display a ‘similarity score’, to quickly check how relevant the displayed compound is.
Similarity searching in Chemical Explorer provides a fast and easy way to check the novelty of chemical compounds, or to search


Easy export of chemical data from Chemical Explorer to Excel
In knowledge-driven industries, intelligent information is key. Regularly searching and reviewing patent literature is crucial for survival in any company invested in creating the technologies of tomorrow,
information and insights throughout a corporation; ensuring that patent literature can be fully exploited to harness new technologies and boost innovation globally!
This option is available both via Chemical Explorer search results and when viewing chemical structures using TextMine.
but how can we effectively share this information with our colleagues, decision- makers and clients? With new Excel export options, users can easily disseminate
Chemical structure filtering
Reviewing large volumes of patent data is a time-consuming process, trying to find that one relevant result can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Being able to discount certain structures that don’t meet the brief can massively speed up this process. Although, Chemical Explorer previously had the functionality to filter
was found in the claims, the Minesoft Development team have now also included chemical structure filters. Filtering can be done by molecular weight and or atomic composition. The filter settings below would only include compounds between 200 and 500 daltons, containing 12 to 20 carbon atoms and 0 fluorine atoms.
by country and/or whether the compound
Filter by molecular weight: 200 500 Filter by molecular formula contains
c12-20 F0
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Chemical name lookup updates
Auto-suggest terms and chemical names in the search results in Chemical Explorer are now determined from the most common names found in patent documents; ensuring that the terms generated by auto-suggest are relevant. Intelligent terms are identified faster than ever.
The lookup box also supports converting of systematic chemical names to structures, as well as chemical names written in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.
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Brand-new chemical search history
Chemical Explorer users have access to a local chemical search history, making it quicker and more convenient to re-run previous searches.
process of having to redraw the chemical structures or search again.
Avoid repetition in your daily tasks with the ability to flick easily between previously searched chemical compounds of interest, while avoiding the time-consuming
Chemical Explorer is an innovative new concept that is being used around the world today. To send us feedback or ask for a demo, email us at [email protected] today.


A brief exploration of Analytics V2 from one of the key Developers!
Understanding large datasets can be difficult; and this difficulty only increases as the size of the dataset grows. Once a dataset has reached many thousands of data points, it can become impossible for one person to manage or to interpret the data accurately.
At Minesoft, our automated systems are constantly updated with highly complex worldwide patent information, which presents problems that require well thought-out, intelligent solutions.
Unlike simple articles, or data tables, data visualisations are processed much faster by our brains. They can be made concise and colourful and therefore easy on the eye. They should engage the mind and focus your attention on both the overall picture and the data that sits behind it. They can help with highlighting outliers, either exceptional performers or under-performers, both of which could be critical to understanding your data.
Having the best data available is crucial, but turning that data into clear, accurate and easy to understand information resources is challenging. Taking large, complex data sets and creating engaging visual content is tough; it takes time, specialist skills and financial investment.
The goal we set for our new patent analysis platform, PatBase Analytics V2, was - in principle - simple. We wanted all of our users, with any level of skill, to be able to take very large highly complex patent datasets, and easily present them in a visual way that is easy on the eye, easy to interpret and understand, and to be able to interact with, and share this data.
We set this as our primary goal, as a way to cut out all the time-consuming leg work that would normally be involved in this process. And by attaching Analytics V2 directly to the PatBase search results, you can accomplish all these tasks in one location. You can search high-quality, comprehensive patent data, and be presenting beautiful, accurate and meaningful visualisations to key decision makers in minutes.
Having followed this approach, working to these goals and seeing the results, all of us at Minesoft firmly believe that we have remarkable product, one that we’d be more than happy to share with you.
James Gray
Lead Software Developer at Minesoft
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NEWS
Rahman Hyatt celebrates 20 years at Minesoft
This Spring, Minesoft Director, Rahman Hyatt, celebrates 20 years working at Minesoft! Rahman joined the company in 1998, a mere 2 years after it was co-founded by Ann Chapman and Ophir Daniel.
“Rahman Hyatt was with Minesoft almost from the start.” Says Ann Chapman- Daniel, Co-founder and Director at Minesoft. “He was taking a late gap travel year in Australasia when Ophir and I opened Minesoft’s first office in Mortlake, Southwest London, in 1997. He joined us on his return and we have benefitted ever since from his intellectual, strategic insight and joie de vie in developing our business internationally into the success it enjoys today. We consider ourselves very lucky, as Rahman has been the most outstanding colleague, co-director, shareholder and friend over the past 20 years. He has worked closely with many of our clients directly – and continues to do so, always available for a discussion or teleconference and totally expert in our field of business. Definitely worth a celebration!”
Long-time colleague and friend, Olivier Huc, looks back on his first meeting with Rahman in 2004: “I first met Rahman at an annual PIUG meeting back in 2004. At the time, Minesoft was viewed as the start-up, the cool and dynamic company which was in many ways changing the industry.” Says Olivier, Senior Business Development Manager at Minesoft. “Rahman was the only one at the conference with a different tone in his presentations: thought-provoking, confident and with a touch of British humour. He perfectly embodied the new attitude towards patent searching and I knew then that I wanted to join the Minesoft team. Rahman understands the needs of professional patent searchers like few do.”
Here's to another 20 years!
Rahman and co-founder Ann Chapman-Daniel pose for a snap at the Rahman sits with the Minesoft Sales team on Richmond Green Minesoft London Office
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Revamped Minesoft Support
Over the past few months, the Support Team at Minesoft has been working on
ways to make training more accessible for all users.
For new users, we have developed a website called PatBasics, a great resource to get users started with PatBase. The Support team have considered common queries received from new users and have incorporated feedback to put together the relevant information for this website. Split into 6 sections: Get Started, Search, View, Share, Tools & Analysis – each page has a short tutorial video, step-by-step guide, FAQs and helpful guides.
In addition, we have launched PatBase training webinars aimed at both new and experienced PatBase users. We will be hosting 8 webinars a month on everything, from working with Citations and Legal Status, to building a comprehensive search strategy.
“We’re thrilled to have already received great feedback from our new PatBase training webinars and recently launched PatBasics.” Says Mie Rasmussen, Customer Service and Training Manager at Minesoft. “Over the coming months, the Minesoft Support team will be further developing our online training resources with the introduction of the Minesoft Knowledge Hub later this year, which will be a one-stop-shop for all Support and Training needs.”
New appointments
In 2018, there has been a significant amount of expansion at Minesoft. We have had some exciting new additions to the Minesoft team in the past few months.
Faiz Abbas has recently joined the Minesoft Development team after completing a degree in Physics at the University of Bristol. Faiz has already had a key role in the development of projects such as PatDocs, the Minesoft Knowledge Hub and PatBasics! He is looking forward to working on more stimulating projects in the near future in his role as Product Manager.
Phil Chapman-Daniel joined the Minesoft Development team at the end of 2017 as Product Manager, alongside Faiz Abbas. Phil interned at Minesoft on a regular basis while .
studying and after recently completing his degree in Law at the University of Exeter, he is excited to join the Minesoft Team full time! Recently, Phil has been working on the development of a new PatentOrder aimed at the US market and is looking forward to working on more projects in the future.
Moira Sivills has joined the Chinese Business Development team alongside James Wicks and Jia Lu, having recently completed a degree in Economics from the University of Edinburgh. Moira comes from a Chinese and English background and speaks Mandarin fluently – making her a great addition to the team!
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An update from the German office
Minesoft Germany has settled into the new offices in Neuss, Germany. Director, Jochen Lennhof, together with Jorge Stegemann,
Peter Niermann, Matvei Maurer and Katarina Bartos Quin have been actively supporting
our clients base in the DACH area and providing extensive training both online and in-person.
This Summer, the German team will be providing PatBase training in Munich and Düsseldorf, visit https://minesoft.com/support/ patbase-training-courses to book your
place.
Throughout 2018, the German office will be attending conferences across Germany. In particular, we look forward to taking part in
the biggest German-speaking conference about patent information and intellectual property rights, PATINFO, for the 14th time! Jochen Lennhof is thrilled to have been invited to join the programme committee for the conference this year. In addition, this World IP Day (26th April), Dresden Technical University have asked Jochen Lennhof to speak about patent information in China and its challenges.
The German office is actively present at patent-related events where we maintain an intensive dialog with our customers, exchanging valuable experiences with representatives of leading research institutions and discussing ways of enhancing our services.
An update from the US office
With the release of PatBase Analytics V2 to kick off the winter, Minesoft USA was excited and determined to validate the solution as a key differentiator for customers focused on IP strategy. Analytics V2 does not replace the job of an IP professional, but enhances it by providing the user complete control of their analysis and integration of the data into PatBase.
We continue to strive for our goal of visiting as many clients and prospects as possible with the new-found motivation and excitement of introducing them to Analytics V2. From these visits, we have gathered client feedback that is
the source of all the enhancements we have made to the analytics module since its release. At Minesoft, client feedback is critical, and our dedicated Development team focuses their efforts to enhance Minesoft tools from this information.
Minesoft USA is continuing to grow from coast to coast. This additional growth helps us continue to meet our goals of excellent customer support and client relationship building. The release of Analytics V2 and the anticipation of many more great things to come with Minesoft, makes this summer an exciting time to be part of Minesoft USA’s effort to bring our suite of patent solutions to all that seek the best tools available.
IP Professionals can seamlessly provide business intelligence and this capability is being well received.
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Minesoft’s Diana Broomby shows off the high-quality machine translations in PatBase at Tecnnova in Medellín, Colombia.
Katarina Bartos-Quin and Jorge Stegemann pose for a quick snap whilst at ICIC in Heidelberg, Germany.
Senior Business Development Manager,
Olivier Huc, highlights the impressive search functionalities and extensive coverage in PatBase to an interested delegate at IP Summit in Brussels, Belgium.
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The staff from the London Office get into the festive spirit for Christmas Jumper Day... Even the office dog, Lotte, is in on the action!
The Minesoft team enjoys a great night of food and dancing at a regional business awards in London, after being highly commended as the Best Business for International Trade!
The Minesoft London office spend a night on the town in celebration of World Intellectual Property Day!
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Upcoming Conferences
Conference
PatLib
PIUG Annual
PraxisAuril
Auto IP Europe
SLA Pharmaceutical and Health Technology meeting
IPBC Global Global IP ConfEx
PatInfo
3rd Cambridge Information & IP Meeting
CPAC
CEPIUG 10 Year Anniversary Conference
IPO Annual
PatentDagen
CIPA Congress
PIUG NE
Steilvorlagen (Frankfurt Book Fair)
VPP Autumn
EPO Patent Information Conference
IP Service World
Date
3rd – 4th May 2018 5th – 10th May 2018 16th – 18th May 2018 17th May 2018
9th - 13th June 2018 10th – 12th June 2018 13th June 2018
13th – 15th June 2018 11th July 2018
30th – 31st August 2018
9th – 11th September 2018 23rd - 25th September 2018 27th September 2018
27th September 2018
8th – 10th October 2018 11th October 2018
25th – 26th October 2018 12th – 14th November 2018 26th - 27th November 2018
Location
Ljubljana, Slovenia Alexandria (VA), USA
Telford, UK
Munich, Germany Baltimore (MD), USA San Francisco (CA), USA London, UK
Ilmenau, Germany Cambridge, UK
Beijing, China
Milan, Italy
Chicago (IL) USA Stockholm, Sweden London, UK
Iselin (NJ), USA Frankfurt, Germany Mannheim, Germany Brussels, Belgium Munich, Germany
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