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Dialog Expands Dialog Choice Pricing Plan

New Intellectual Property & Business Information Content Now Available for Flat-Fee Enterprise Distribution

CARY, N.C., USA (September 27, 2004) — Dialog, a Thomson (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, said today that it has added databases of global intellectual property records and business information to its growing roster of content available through Dialog Choice, the company's fixed-fee enterprise subscription pricing plan.

Dialog Choice enables corporations, government agencies, law firms and other enterprises to offer unlimited access to critical, in-depth information resources, provided by leading information providers, directly to the desktops of professionals throughout their organizations or to selected departments and units. Some enterprises distribute their Dialog Choice content through their portals, intranets and other in-house information-sharing systems.

More than 120 databases, provided by 62 information providers, are now available through the Dialog Choice plan.

Content available through the Dialog Choice plan includes high-quality intellectual property data, scientific research and business information and news that are often unavailable on the open Web.

New content sources recently made available for site licensing include 10 files offered by ProQuest Information and Learning, which creates and publishes databases for libraries and educational institutions worldwide. ProQuest is offering databases such as ABI/ INFORM® (company histories, competitive intelligence and new product development research) and Business Dateline® (regional perspectives reported in more than 550 local business publications across Canada and the U.S.).

International intellectual property records now available through the Dialog Choice plan include Internet domain names (a database of worldwide Internet domain names with more than 100 million records) and abstracts of archived and new patent records from the People's Republic of China.

Business information files recently added to the Dialog Choice program include company data published in the American Business Directory and the Canadian Business Directory. More than 12 million North American public and private companies are included in the databases.

"Dialog Choice is a viable option for virtually any organization that recognizes the importance of giving their people immediate access to the best information resources available," said Viji Krishnan, Dialog vice president, publisher management. "Sharing targeted, relevant research and news through the Dialog Choice plan can help organizations make their executives, managers, researchers and others more competitively astute, sensitive to markets and successful in any number of business pursuits."

Added Krishnan: "Companies increasingly realize that knowledge is a key asset for their organizations. Dialog Choice is all about spreading knowledge across an enterprise, and at predictable, pre-set annual costs."

Dialog is one of the world's leading aggregators of information. It offers online access to more than 15 terabytes of content, a vast and continuously updated electronic warehouse of news, business intelligence, current and archived journal articles, patents and research across an array of industries and topics.

Dialog account managers work with Dialog Choice customers to provide an off-the-shelf solution that best serves their organization's unique needs. For example, a pharmaceutical company might make databases of clinical and toxicological data available to its research and compliance departments worldwide, while a law firm might select a global collection of databases containing patent records for its intellectual property department.

Dialog also said that it is continuing to work with many of the thousands of its information providers — such as publishers, government agencies, information aggregators and others — to make their content available through the Dialog Choice plan.

"Our information providers around the world are intrigued by the opportunity to make their editorial and research materials available to a wider audience while also locking in a guaranteed revenue stream," Krishnan said. "Dialog Choice is a win-win for both our customers and our information providers."

The expanding Dialog Choice program comes as many corporations, government agencies and other organizations are harnessing new technologies to implement enterprise-wide information solutions.

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About Dialog and The Thomson Corporation
Dialog, a pioneer in developing the technology behind electronic information retrieval, is the world leader in providing online-based information services to organizations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as government, business, science, engineering, finance and law.

Today, the online services provided by Dialog — offered through the Dialog®, Dialog Profound®, Dialog DataStar™, Dialog NewsEdge® and Dialog Intelliscope^SM brands — give users the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 1.4 billion unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise intranets. Searchable content includes articles and reports from thousands of real-time news feeds, newspapers, broadcast transcripts and trade publications, plus research reports and analyst notes providing support for financial decision-making, as well as in-depth repositories of scientific and technical data, patents, trademarks and other intellectual property data. Information professionals and end-users at business, professional and government organizations in more than 100 countries prize Dialog services for their depth and breadth of content, precision searching and speed.

Based in Cary, N.C., USA, Dialog has operations in 27 countries. Dialog (www.dialog.com) is a business of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC). With 2003 revenues of US$7.6 billion, Thomson (www.thomson.com) is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers.

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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 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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