Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2019-09-23
Buyer: European Patent Organisation
Country: NL
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Restricted procedure
CPV classification: 72312200: Optical character recognition services
Submission deadline: 2019-10-04
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: The European Patent Office (EPO) receives daily a large amount of confidential new patent applications, forms, free text letters as well as patent and non-patent literature containing plain text, tables, chemical and mathematical formulae as well as drawings relating to the patent grant process in various formats. These documents need to be OCR-converted into XML-structured data where formulae, drawings and many tables can be captured as images. The requested services cover XML-conversion, localisation and extraction of citations and XML mark-up in line with the EPO’s capturing guidelines. On average the services relate to 2 000 000 pages per month spread over 3 Service groups. Service descriptions and volumes are subject to change.
All data shall be kept and services shall be performed within the territory of one of the EPC Member States. The cervices shall be performed at contractor’s premises.
The start-up phase must be performed within 3 months from contract signature. The production phase will start on the commencement date i.e. after the EPO’s acceptance of the contractor’s fulfilment of the start-up phase. The operational phase will be for 3 years from the commencement date with three optional extensions of 1 year each at the EPO’s discretion.
Proposals for variants, the effect of which would be to reduce significantly the rights and safeguards of the EPO, are not allowed.
Interested parties shall be required to submit a completed and duly signed confidentiality agreement (available via the EPO e-Tendering system on the EPO website). The EPO will verify the confidentiality agreement as submitted before making available the procurement documents.
In case that an interested party appears not to be able to fulfil the relevant (selection and other) criteria and/or whose circumstances are such as seriously to call into question its financial and professional reliability (see Article 2 of the general conditions of tender, available under www.epo.org) the EPO reserves the right not to provide the procurement documents.
To enable companies to already now assess their interest in this tender before receiving the procurement documents, the following shall be taken into consideration.
Bidder must, amongst others, have proven experience in high volume OCR conversions and data extractions of a similar nature, and be able to submit at least three references thereof. The data to be processed will be kept within one of the member states of the EPC and the location from which the bidder proposes to perform the services must be in one of those states. The bidder must be able to demonstrate compliance with data protection laws. The complete selection criteria (which also include a turnover threshold against yearly contract value) are listed in the procurement documents.
The bidder shall have a substantiated approach for quality assurance and information security in relation to the handling of the EPO’s confidential information. The complete award criteria are listed in the procurement documents.
If several bidders submit a joint bid, they must be jointly and severally liable for the performance of the obligations under the contract. A declaration to this effect, duly signed by all members of the grouping and appointing a representative authorised to act on behalf of all members, must be submitted with the bid.
Only electronic requests to participate and bids may be submitted. Please note that a qualified electronic signature is required as specified on EPO's website: http://www.epo.org/about-us/tenders/signatures.html
Please follow the instructions on the pre-selection questionnaire carefully, complete the resulting document and submit it via the Bidding Cockpit.
Please note that EPO's procurement procedures are governed solely by EPO's own procurement rules. The relevant rules are described in the EPO's general conditions of tender, which are available at the EPO's website www.epo.org/about-us/tenders/general-conditions.
Das Europäische Patentamt (EPA) erhält täglich eine große Menge an vertraulichen Dokumenten, die aus neuen Patentanmeldungen, Formularen, Briefen mit Textinhalt sowie Patentliteratur und Nicht-Patentliteratur bestehen. Sie beziehen sich auf das Patenterteilungsverfahren, werden in verschiedenen Formaten eingereicht und beinhalten Text, Tabellen, chemische und mathematische Formeln sowie Zeichnungen.
Diese Dokumente sollen mittels OCR Prozessen in XML strukturierte Daten konvertiert werden, wobei Formeln, Zeichnungen und die meisten Tabellen als Bilder erfasst werden können. Die erforderlichen Dienstleistungen umfassen XML Konversion, Lokalisation und Extraktion von Zitierungen und XML Markierungen anhand der Datenerfassungsrichtlinien des EPAs. Im Durchschnitt beziehen sich die Dienstleistungen auf 2 Millionen Seiten pro Monat, verteilt auf 3 Service-Gruppen. Leistungsbeschreibungen und Umfang können sich ändern.

Eligibility requirements: See selection questions.
Siehe Auswahlfragen
Voir questions de sélection.