• Collaboration by European intellectual property offices, customs authorities and manufacturers
• Easy access to databases of trademarks and industrial designs
• 2 200 000 images initially

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The eMage project is an Internet-based service, providing easy and real-time multilingual access to databases of trademarks and industrial designs. These databases are populated and maintained by European IP Offices and SMEs. The service will be used by customs authorities looking for counterfeit goods in airports or ports, using a digital camera and access to the Internet.

The eMAGE project federates existing registered trademarks and industrial design databases through a dedicated web service. In addition to standard Internet access, the eMAGE project provides dedicated interfaces to access the databases offering anywhere-anytime access, a key service for customs, police or anti-fraud services.

The system provides :

• a European wide access to RTID (Registered Trademarks and Industrial Designs) databases from IP Offices and commercial infrastructure in charge of eMAGE distribution

• a query interface to RTID databases from several European countries (including NAS), including capacity for image recognition and multilingual processing of classification information

• an Internet based service (remote access) to distribute and exploit these data at European level

The project also offers the service to non-professional specialists (marketing departments, packaging departments, industrial property departments in major companies, SMEs/SMIs, public researchers, engineering schools, law students, etc.) and to public services (such as customs, police or anti fraud services).

The easy-access relies on very innovative image-based search and navigation associated with a multilingual natural language search engine. eMAGE exploits technologies that identify images in large databases using pattern recognition plus multilingual natural language access. Requests may be submitted to the eMAGE web interface using digital camera. Relevant results will be then provided from a European registered logos and industrial designs databases with multilingual natural language access in French, Portuguese, German and English and a set of image signatures used for pattern recognition