CPA, one of the world's largest intellectual property
service providers, has speeded up its service and increased the
volume of business it can handle by using software to check data
for accuracy and adherence to complex patent
rules.
The Data Integrator software, from software supplier Pervasive,
checks patent data for accuracy and is claimed to be able to
validate about 10,000 intellectual property cases an hour. It can
check patent information against different rules on patents from
all the major countries and correct data.
After the patent data is validated and put into the right format,
it is passed on to an IBM iSeries server-based package, which
calculates when the patent is due to be renewed and any other
charges associated with the case.
CPA's previous patent data mapping service, which was built
in-house, had a limited functionality and could only process files
in text form. It could not convert other formats, such as Excel
spreadsheets or XML, to be processed by the iSeries.
"A major benefit of the Data Integrator software is that we are
carrying out data validation, which is an order of magnitude
greater than the old system," said Nick Church, systems interface
manager at CPA.
"There is also a much greater choice in the way we can manipulate
data," he said. Large case workloads which previously could take
weeks to validate can now be processed in one week, Church
added.
CPA's main IT systems for processing patent renewals are based in
the Channel Islands. In addition to IBM iSeries hardware and DB2
databases, the firm uses Intel hardware running Windows and Linux
operating systems for Oracle databases and Lotus Domino groupware.