WILLISTON, VT--(Marketwired - Mar 6, 2017) - Article One Partners (AOP), the world's largest intellectual property research community and pioneer in crowd-based prior art searching, announced today that former President Peter Vanderheyden has been promoted to the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective January 2017.

Prior to joining Article One, Mr. Vanderheyden spent over six years as the Vice President and Managing Director at LexisNexis (a Division of RELX Group), in the Global IP Solutions business, where he led the team that developed the world's largest online patent database (TotalPatent®) and patent quality assessment tool (PatentOptimizer™). With over thirty years in business leadership, including five with AOP, Mr. Vanderheyden has proven his ability to run successful customer-focused organizations that deliver high quality services and continued value through effective and efficient technologies and services.

"The Board of Directors is very pleased with Mr. Vanderheyden's leadership and proven performance in helping our clients defend, monetize and innovate in the Intellectual Property area. We are starting 2017 off by promoting Pete to the role of CEO given our ambitious growth plans," said Paul Digiammarino, Executive Chairman of the Board. "I'm excited to accept this promotion and energized to bring Article One Partners to the next level of our evolution as the world's largest crowd based search company. We have over 40,000 registered searchers across 170 countries worldwide and we can bring these skills to address any organizational needs for IP research and innovation talent on a variable basis," said Mr. Vanderheyden.

Mr. Vanderheyden was recently invited to speak at the World Congress 9^th Annual Corporate IP Counsel Forum in New York City, on March 21^st - 23^rd. He will be moderating a panel to discuss patent monetization and IP protection with panelists Mark Beloborodov (Philips), Michael Bishop (AT&T), and Kevin Cranman (Verizon Telematics).

AOP is also a sponsor at the PTAB Bar Association Inaugural Conference, March 1-3, 2017 in Washington, DC.

About Article One Partners

Since its founding in 2008, Article One Partners (AOP) has revolutionized the transparency of patent data. Today, AOP is the world's largest patent research community, broadcasting its studies to over 40,000 people and distributing more than $7.8 million in rewards to researchers for their work on over 5,000 client patent studies. AOP is exceptionally successful in identifying non-textual and non-patent literature. The company is a partner to 17 Fortune 100 companies, 74 Forbes Global 2000 and 7 of the top 10 US patent filers. AOP's client satisfaction rate exceeds 90%.