An Australian startup just used deep learning to win a massive European deal

A Queensland startup has celebrated a new deal with a major European customer after it perfected new deep learning technology that recognises images beyond simple shape and texture matching. TrademarkVision's deal with the European Union Intellectual Property Office this month comes after a successful beta test that saw around 1,000 trademark image searches conducted each day. The EUIPO becomes the first governmental agency to take up the technology, although the terms of the contract were not disclosed. In the past year, the company has been working on deep learning technology to take its software to the next level of intelligence, and the move has borne fruit in a spectacular way with the EU deal. "We've focused on machine learning techniques so the system can recognise objects in trademarks and logos much like humans do. Despite the wide variety of ways humans pictorially depict objects in logos, deep learning has helped to solve this semantic challenge in a quick and robust way," said TrademarkVision founder and chief executive Sandra Mau.