August 13, 2001

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Volume 79, Number 33
CENEAR 79 33 p.25
ISSN 0009-2347

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E-BUSINESS
NEWS UPDATES FOR THE WORLD OF BUSINESS ONLINE

Research

SOPHEON has allied itself with ChemIndustry.com, a Web-based search service, which will make Sopheon's Intota network accessible to ChemIndustry users. Intota is an online resource of scientific and technical experts that provides answers to questions through telephone or e-mail responses. Sopheon says Intota was built to address "knowledge transfer" and "the growing problem of scientific and technical 'brain drain' caused by early retirements, employee turnover, rapid obsoleting of knowledge, and declining graduation rates." Last month, Sopheon acquired the information services division of Aventis Research & Technologies, which originally was formed as the scientific information department of Hoechst's central research effort. It was converted to a profit center in 1998, serving external customers as well, and has annual revenues of about $8.5 million.

ORANGEBOOKPATENTS.COM is making it possible for subscribers to receive the full text of every patent listed in FDA's Orange Book. The Orange Book lists all drug products approved by the agency and therapeutic equivalence evaluations for multisource--as in branded and generic-- drugs. Related patent and exclusivity information are contained in the listings. OrangeBookPatents.com was created in April to provide drug patent and exclusivity information in a single hyperlinked format. Separately, Pharmalicensing.com and NetsPat have joined forces to build Internet-based platforms for online intellectual property management in the life sciences industry. The companies anticipate creating an application that will allow pharmaceutical and biotechnology executives to manage patenting and licensing activities via a secure, online service.

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Exchanges

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CHEMICAL EXCHANGES CheMatch.com and ChemConnect continue to report increasing traffic on their trading sites. CheMatch says trading hit a new record of more than 1 million metric tons in the second quarter, with an average transaction value of over $500,000. Since its start in early 1999, more than 3.5 million metric tons have been traded. The site also has expanded its Market Trak information products to include daily online spot price graphs--showing bid/ask spreads--for six bulk commodity chemicals. At ChemConnect, trading volumes increased more than 30% in the second quarter, compared with the first. Its annualized transaction volume has hit $3.2 billion, with average transaction values of $1.3 million. ChemConnect merged with industry network Envera in June. In that month, Envera handled more than 15,000 transactions among trading partners. Last month, ChemConnect said it would partner with China Chemical City on the Internet, an online trade portal and database, to set up ChemConnect China.

CC-CHEMPLORER has arisen from the merger of industry e-marketplaces cc-markets and chemplorer. With the combination, 200 suppliers are now offering a total of 1.6 million products and services through standardized catalogs on the cc-chemplorer website. The chemicals and life sciences marketplace specializes in indirect goods, rather than raw materials. It has 15 leading companies in German-speaking countries as its customers. BASF, Degussa, Henkel, and SAPMarkets sponsored the creation of cc-markets, while Bayer, Chemfidence, and Deutsche Telekom started chemplorer. The original sites started up one month apart in late 2000 and claim a combined 320,000 transactions, valued at about $295 million, since going live.

ALSO OF INTEREST ...

CHEMCENTRAL, a leading global chemical distributor, has contracted with MSDSonline to build and implement a material safety data sheet (MSDS) access and management system for its customers. The MSDSs will be stored and maintained in an electronic library on Chemcentral's e-commerce site, Efodia.

VWR International has licensed LabVelocity's MarketCatalyst software for content and website management. The software will let the laboratory products distributor provide detailed information from its suppliers to customers who are researching, evaluating, and selecting products for purchase.

MUEHLSTEIN, a leading international rubber and plastics distributor that handles more than 2.4 billion lb of products per year, has joined plastics industry e-marketplace Omnexus. More than 20 major suppliers are part of the marketplace serving end users and processors.

IBM and consulting and services firm iXL will offer PartnerDirect for the manufacturing industry. PartnerDirect is designed to create private hubs or exchanges for midtier manufacturers and their distributors, customers, and partners.