European Patent Office | Service Industry

EPO – Full cycle maintenance and ongoing digital transformation: software and
cloud infrastructure management

About the client

The European Patent Office (EPO) offers inventors a uniform application procedure which enables them to seek patent protection in up to 40 European countries.
The EPO is one of the leading international organisations in Europe, with some 7000 staff from over 30 different countries at five locations in four countries. Under the European Patent Convention inventors can obtain patent protection in up to 40 countries by filing a single application.

Infotel UK - Service Industry Case Study

Mission :

A critical upgrade of an ageing system to a cloud-based system, improving its data model, costs and performance, and managing synchronization of patents data between the EPO and US PTO.

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Managed data-port to Oracle servers on AWS cloud
  • Simplified and improved data model
  • Rigorously tested data sync and security

THE CHALLENGE

EPO Classification is an overhaul for the EPO big data requirements and patent classification system, involving a controlled data port to Oracle servers on AWS, Amazon cloud services providing auto-scaling & load-balancing and application failover to reduce costs and ensure system stability. Along with maintaining its desktop applications for processing patents, one key function of this phase of the EPO project is management of data synchronization with the US TPO, with rules to ensure EPO restricted data and audit trail is not included

  • Data port to AWS removing invalid and duplicate data
  • Managed data synchronization governed by rules to include only shared data between systems, while allowing FBI access for review.
  • Maintenance of Doctool & Classtool applications for classification

THE SOLUTION

  • Managed and staged data port to Oracle on AWS, removing invalid/duplicate data
  • Managed data synchronization governed by rules to include only shared data between systems + allowing FBI review
  • Rigorous testing of data sync and security
  • Cloud-based system provides auto-scaling & load-balancing and application failover to reduce costs, ensure system stability and improve performance.
  • Simplified and improved data model
  • No downtime during system change

THE TECHNOLOGIES

  • ETL migration from mainframe legacy database
  • Oracle server on AWS Cloud
  • Back-end programming: JBoss Enterprise Java
  • Desktop applications for creating and deleting allocations

THE RESOURCES

  • 1 Project manager
  • 13 Developers (including 2 in The Hague)
  • 2 Testers
    (This covers the CPCI development and the maintenance of existing systems)

THE RESULTS

EPO Classification is an overhaul for the EPO big data requirements and patent classification system, involving a controlled data port to Oracle servers on AWS, Amazon cloud services providing auto-scaling & load-balancing and application failover to reduce costs and ensure system stability. Along with maintaining its desktop applications for processing patents, one key function of this phase of the EPO project is management of data synchronization with the US TPO, with rules to ensure EPO restricted data and audit trail is not included.

  • Data port to AWS removing invalid and duplicate data
  • Managed data synchronization governed by rules to include only shared data between systems, while allowing FBI access for review.
  • Maintenance of Doctool & Classtool applications for classification

System upgrade to take the EPO into a new age with a cloud-based foundation for its big data services

INFOTEL’S EXPERT SAYS :

« CPC International will be the EPO’s master database for allocations. It is the EPO’s first cloud-based system, so it has presented a number of challenges in the infrastructure setup and security areas. To paraphrase Karl Marx: CPC International is the opium of the people. It is truly breath-taking in scope. A project with the ambition and ability to make the EPO great again».