Tumbleweed’s SecureTransport moves files over the Net, not the highways
The Patent and Trademark Office has implemented an electronic transfer system to move large files of sensitive and complex data over the Internet rather than transport it on tape.
“What we’re trying to do is meet the goals of our 21st Century Strategic Plan for moving to an all-electronic office,” said Larry Cogut, director of PTO’s Office of Acquisition Management.
The tool it settled on to accomplish the job is SecureTransport from Tumbleweed Communications Corp. of Redwood City, Calif. SecureTransport uses a Web browser interface to transfer files using Secure HTTP. It also provides workflow tools and digitally signed verification that files have been received intact.
The notification and verification features help allay the fear of using the public Internet as a medium for moving sensitive files, said Tumbleweed CTO John Thielens. “It is about reliability as much as security.” The Patent Office publishes patent applications 18 months after they are filed. The task of managing the data and preparing it for publication is handled by Reed Technology and Information Services Inc. of Horsham, Pa., under a 10-year, $876 million contract awarded last year.
“The data needs to be transported to Horsham,” Cogut said. “We used to truck data back and forth on tapes, which had all the pitfalls of that type of transit.”
RTIS specializes in preparing complex technical data for publication. Under the Patent Data Capture contract, the company converts material including chemical structures, mathematical equations, DNA se- quences, tabular information and graphics into searchable XML and image databases. This material is published and also used internally by PTO examiners.
The company also scans and indexes all new patent applications, which are expected to total more than 75 million pages this year.
“We knew we had a problem,” in moving data by truck, Cogut said.
Filling the pipes
But if over-the-road transport caused problems, Internet data transfers also presented challenges.
“These files are big,” Thielens said.
Many patent notices run more than 15 megabytes, and an average patent file can be more than 3 gigabytes. Typical daily volume between PTO headquarters and Horsham is about 20G, but this can go as high as 80G on a busy day, Cogut said.
“When ‘big’ means something approaching 2G, a lot of software stops working,” Thielens said. “Our software is designed to work with very large files.”
A key to handling large file transfers is not assuming anything about the transport infrastructure, Thielens said. You cannot assume the entire file is going to fit in memory anywhere along the way, and you cannot use features that require making a copy of the file.
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TTP. It also provides workflow tools and digitally signed verification that files have been received intact.
