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New Brand, Trademark & Tabular Data Added to Dialog's Profound
BrandLine & TableBase now available through online research service

CARY, NC, USA -- 7 December 2001 -- The Dialog Corporation, a Thomson business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services, today announced that it has added BrandLine and TableBase to its Profound® online service -- powerful new content sources that enable marketing, legal, intellectual property and other researchers to quickly find targeted information on a variety of business and economic topics.

"We have embarked on a strategy of continuous improvement for all our products and services," said Paul Colucci, Dialog senior vice president of product development. "The enhancements to Profound that we are announcing today make that service an even more indispensable resource for its users around the world. The enhancements give Profound users a new power to find the targeted and focused information they need, quickly and accurately."

The first of the two new services available through Profound is BrandLine, now part of Profound's WorldSearch feature. BrandLine combines information culled from different international data sources with an easy-to-use, menu-driven search tool that retrieves detailed information on all aspects of brands from around the world and the companies with which they are associated. Users may search by brand names, their sponsoring companies, appropriate SIC codes or by other search criteria.

Information available for retrieval through BrandLine includes global brand and licensing news, current and pending trademark registrations (including Japanese and other international trademark data), background information on sponsoring companies and more.

BrandLine is composed of aggregated information provided by leading publishers in the marketing and trademark arenas, including Thomson & Thomson (a unit of the West Group, also a Thomson business), Thomas Register, Kompass, Gale Group and the Advertiser & Agency Red Book.

The second new service available through Profound is TableBase, a new feature of Profound's QuickSearch component that enables users to quickly find comparative data presented in tabular formats on such topics as company performance, industry market share, products, brands, markets, consumption patterns, demographics, imports/exports, industry and economic forecasts, as well as country and economic comparisons from around the world. Detailed information on 90 industries and from most major economies is available through TableBase.

Users of TableBase select from industry and country categories, and then narrow their searches by other criteria, such as company name, journal name, publication date, concept terms, SIC/product codes and other searchable fields.

The rankings and comparative information presented in table formats through TableBase are culled from more than 1,000 periodicals and other information sources, including statistical annuals, brokerage reports, trade association reports and government documents. Many tables include a link to the originating article or report.

TableBase is produced by Responsive Database Services, Inc. (RDS), a unit of the Gale Group (also a Thomson business). Because RDS indexes the content of the tables, rather than the text of the surrounding original document, TableBase users can accurately find relevant and appropriate tabular information quickly.

About Dialog
Dialog is the worldwide leader in providing online-based information services to organizations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as business, science, engineering, finance and law. Its products and services, such as Dialog®, Profound® and DataStar™, offer organizations the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 800 million unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise Intranets. For almost three decades, Dialog's brands have been known for their breadth and depth of content, precision searching and speed. The Winter Corporation recently recognized Dialog for its breadth and depth of content when they named the company the Grand Prize-winner in the Database Scalability Program 2000.

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., USA, with direct operations in 30 countries, Dialog products are used by more than 20,000 corporate customers in over 100 countries. Dialog is a subsidiary of The Thomson Corporation, a leading global e-information and solutions company in the business and professional marketplace with 2000 revenues of approximately $6 billion. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the Toronto (TSE:TOC) and London stock exchanges.

For more information about Dialog, call 1-800-3-DIALOG or visit www.dialog.com. For more information about Thomson, visit www.thomson.com.

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All designated trademarks used herein are the property of The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries. Registered marks are registered by The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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