Workflow Database to Record Patent & Literature Information

Company Profile

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), a worldwide developer of display technology, is leading research and commercial development in the field of Light Emitting Polymers (LEPs). CDT commercialises its technology through sales of products, materials, system engineering services, and selective licensing. CDT expect that LEP technology will be used in areas such as mobile communications, computers, consumer electronics and as an alternative to the cathode ray tube used in conventional televisions and computer monitors.

Business Requirements

An essential part of the research and development carried out by CDT’s engineers involves investigation into the latest patent registration information and associated literature on state-of-the-art LEP technologies.

CDT had a requirement to provide the engineers with a data repository to hold this information including patent records, literature records, and graphics, and then to publish selected data approved by the engineers via the company’s Intranet. They wanted this repository to take the form of a new web-enabled SQL Server database to record the information and make it available to users via a web browser interface.

Our Solution

Working in partnership with CDT, Beacon designed, developed and installed an advanced relational database management system integrated with CDT’s Intranet using several leading edge technologies and our own bespoke software.

Using a custom Java parser, text was extracted from a donor Bulletin Board site, pre-processed and published to a Microsoft SQL database. A bespoke Intranet document routing facility permits CDT site engineers to review and approve data before publication for general consumption. Users are able to comprehensively query the database contents with a Web browser to search for patent information either by field or keywords on the Intranet.

For the administration staff of the database, we developed an administration tool using Microsoft Access providing functions for adding, editing and deleting data. We also provided an advanced reporting function to monitor and report on the state of the data at any time during pre-processing.