Patent-based technology analyses - iRIX strengthens EconSight's data expertise for innovative analyses of patent data and technology trends

„iRIX is characterised by outstanding database expertise and an impressively quick understanding of customer needs. The employees' ability to delve into problems and find solutions quickly makes collaboration transparent and very efficient“

Kai Gramke, CEO EconSight

Our client
EconSight is dedicated to analysing patent-based technologies in order to assess the innovation potential of companies in future technologies. This approach covers a broad spectrum of technologies, ranging from cutting-edge topics such as Smart Factory, HearTech, Brain-Machine-Interaction, Fuel Cells to Artificial Intelligence.

These technology-based strategy and competitive analyses support companies and investors with ratings and assessments that serve as a basis for well-founded investment decisions. EconSight also prepares studies and analyses on global and regional technology trends on behalf of politicians, associations and foundations.

Challenge
There are currently around 140 million patents worldwide and 5,000 new ones are added every day. Constant change is therefore the order of the day in the patent system. These huge amounts of data must be quickly and correctly categorised and evaluated. Maintaining up-to-date data requires enormous computing capacity. In addition, new questions are constantly emerging that need to be integrated into the database as modules, which is why the flexibility of the database is crucial.
Originally, data storage was developed exclusively for the financial industry in order to fulfil the special requirements in terms of data up-to-dateness. However, it soon became clear that it was not just a matter of collecting patent data. Rather, the database should also provide comprehensive information on technologies and companies.

Solution
The main task of iRIX is the technical implementation by consolidating data from different data sources and preparing it for comprehensive analyses. The customer-relevant reports are created by EconSight, with iRIX providing the necessary data and infrastructure such as Exasol, Databricks and Power BI in a hybrid cloud strategy on Azure and AWS.

We rely on advanced technologies such as Apache Spark, a powerful platform for vector calculations that can also work efficiently in parallel with large amounts of data. In addition, we use the versatile programming language Python to develop customised modules that can be executed as a user-defined function (UDF) in the database.

In close cooperation with agile methodology, we not only enable efficient implementation, but also actively support the customer in every phase. Tools such as Jira and Confluence from Atlassian are used to optimise the workflow and maintain an overview.