Connect, Integrate, Optimize: Three Trends Influencing Software for Intellectual Property

A disconnect between IP management software and IP suppliers, tools, and internal processes can add unnecessary hurdles to day-to-day IP management tasks, as any organization struggling with out-of-date data, unrelenting emails, and time-consuming workflows can attest. By centralizing IP data, tools, and services in a single platform, your software for intellectual property can save you valuable time and free up your team to focus on higher-priority or more profitable projects. We set out three trends influencing IP management systems, from connected IP services to automated data verification and timely intellectual property law updates. 

Your chosen IP management system is critical to your ability to streamline processes, simplify operations, and enhance overall efficiency. Ideally, the software you use for intellectual property should create a centralized all-in-one location for IP management that enables you to ensure data accuracy, keep on top of intellectual property law changes, and connect your team with vital IP services, resources, and tools.

As our Subject Matter Expert Conor Patterson explained in our recent webinar ‘Seamless Connectivity: Optimizing IP Management Through Advanced Integration,’ our Equinox IP management software is helping corporates and law firms to transform their day-to-day workflows by enabling them to efficiently manage, track, forecast, and renew their IP assets through a single platform.

• Trend 2: Integrating Official Data to Reduce the Administrative Burden

It takes considerable time to manually compare the records in your patent and trademark management software against official registries, but failing to do so carries additional risks. With our Equinox IP management software, users can access official data directly from the platform, compare portfolio records against official data, and easily create new cases.

Whether you choose to receive notifications or to have data populated directly in your Equinox IPMS, our PTO comparison tool is designed to reduce the administrative burden. Once a week, all active patent and trademark cases on your system can be compared against the latest official office data, highlighting any mismatches, and providing you with options to accept data suggestions. 

Our handy dashboard identifies cases without a match, cases with data discrepancies, and complete matches (© Questel 2024).

Our USPTO and EPO Connections link directly to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), U.S. Trademark Status Document Retrieval (USDR), and European Patent Office (EPO) portals to provide and process notifications directly in the platform, including importing communications, associated documents, and related tasks for patent and trademark applications. 

Example of a PTO notification from the USPTO (© Questel 2024).

And that’s not all. Our software connects to our Orbit Business Intelligence tool, including its IDS Analyzer module, so you can quickly search by patent family, doublecheck citations for newly imported portfolios, and automatically generate additional invention disclosure statements for U.S. applications.

• Trend 3: Optimize Intellectual Property Law Updates for Added Peace of Mind

Finally, our in-built intellectual property law engine monitors country law and official fee changes around the world to keep you and your department up to date. Intellectual property laws covering patents, trademarks, registered designs, utility models, and copyrights are monitored by a dedicated editorial team for more than 242 countries, including 652 renewal laws and 4,374 official fees. 

You can also find new agents all over the world to collaborate with in our new Members Directory, and users can check all ‘pre-set’ tasks as available by default.

The system includes recommended pre-sets to get you started, with our intellectual property law engine notifying or generating automatic updates of any changes (© Questel 2024).