EPO Partners with Mistral AI for Patent Process and OCR Enhancement

EPO News

Published March 11th, 2026

Detected March 24th, 2026

Summary

The European Patent Office (EPO) has partnered with Mistral AI to deploy an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) model. This initiative aims to enhance the patent granting process by transforming non-machine-readable documents into structured data, supporting prior-art searchability and analysis.

View original document View source feed page

What changed

The European Patent Office (EPO) has announced a partnership with Mistral AI, a European AI startup, to integrate an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) model into its patent processing systems. This collaboration focuses on transforming non-machine-readable patent documents into structured data, thereby improving the efficiency and accuracy of prior-art searches conducted by EPO examiners. The initiative aligns with the EPO's digital transformation strategy and its AI Policy, emphasizing European governance and digital sovereignty for critical AI infrastructure.

This partnership is expected to modernize the processing of patent applications and technical information, addressing complexities such as multilingual text, formulas, and older scanned documents. By leveraging AI developed within Europe, the EPO aims to bolster European innovation and ensure that sensitive patent information is processed in compliance with European legal, operational, and ethical frameworks. The integration of this OCR solution is part of the EPO's ongoing efforts to maintain an efficient, trusted, and future-ready European patent system.

Source document (simplified)

Home

Press centre

Overview

Facebook X Linkedin Email

EPO partners with leading European AI startup to enhance patent process and strengthen digital sovereignty

11.03.2026

in Press release
- EPO deploys advanced optical character recognition (OCR) model developed by Mistral AI, a leader in frontier AI
- Initiative reinforces EPO’s digital infrastructure and operational resilience, in full alignment with its AI Policy and Strategic Plan 2028
Munich, 11 March 2026 – The European Patent Office (EPO) today announces a major milestone in its use of cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) to further enhance the quality and efficiency of the patent granting process. EPO experts and Mistral AI technical teams have co-operated closely on a new solution based on state-of-the-art optical character recognition (OCR) technology. The solution is now seamlessly integrated with the EPO's systems to transform non-machine-readable patent documents into structured patent data for superior prior-art searchability and analysis.

“This partnership supports the EPO’s digital transformation strategy and reinforces Europe’s capacity to innovate, while ensuring that critical AI infrastructure remains under European governance,” said EPO President António Campinos . “Our joint initiative illustrates how European partnerships can responsibly and effectively leverage AI to enhance public services, boost competitiveness and support a strong innovation ecosystem.”

Jointly developed and deployed in Europe

By prioritising AI solutions developed in Europe together with partners like Mistral AI, the EPO is actively supporting European AI companies and SMEs. At the same time, all users of the European patent system benefit from the modernised processing of patent applications and of the technical information that they contain. The new jointly developed OCR solution is specially designed to address the complexities of patent documents, including multilingual text, formulas, chemical structures, tables and older scanned publications. The significantly higher extraction accuracy of the solution enables more reliable structuring of data and supports examiners more efficiently in delivering prior art searches of the highest quality.

Through such partnerships, the EPO also contributes to European digital sovereignty, such that sensitive patent information continues to be processed in full compliance with European legal, operational and ethical frameworks. This ensures an accessible, high-quality European patent system that remains efficient, trusted and future‑ready.

In addition to handling around 200 000 patent applications, 200 000 search reports and 120 000 grants annually, the EPO also manages the world’s largest free patent information database, with more than 160 million technical records.

Driving the EPO’s strategic transformation

The solution builds on a successful three‑month proof‑of‑concept carried out by the EPO and Mistral AI, in which carefully selected EPO data was used to finetune an OCR model that shows strong performance for the EPO’s use case. The organisations plan to scale the solution and further refine it based on operational experience, while evaluating additional sovereign AI capabilities to support workflows across the patent system.

The initiative is fully aligned with the EPO’s AI Policy, which provides a clear framework for the responsible introduction of emerging technologies. It also contributes to the goals of the EPO’s Strategic Plan 2028, which paves the way for modern, connected digital tools and a resilient technological environment to meet the evolving needs of innovators, applicants and partners across Europe.

Further information

Media contacts European Patent Office

Roberta Romano-Götsch
EPO spokesperson

EPO press desk
[email protected]

About the EPO

With 6 300 staff members, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the largest public service institutions in Europe. Headquartered in Munich with offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna, the EPO was founded with the aim of strengthening co-operation on patents in Europe. Through the EPO's centralised patent granting process, inventors are able to obtain high-quality patent protection in up to 46 countries, covering a market of some 700 million people. The EPO is also the world's leading authority in patent information and patent searching.