Posted by Lecorpio Client Services on Sun, Aug 01, 2010
Unfortunately, a number of patent docketing software vendors do not always reveal the overall cost of ownership required to deploy their systems and it is only after the product is purchased that complications related to configuration, data migration, integration and training become clear. So begins the spiral into the hidden-cost trap.
The patent department needs to have an analytical, result-oriented thought process when evaluating patent docketing services and software to support intellectual property (IP) management functions. However, even the savviest professionals are often misguided by the low-cost appeal of software packages and too frequently fall victim to the high upkeep and maintenance costs of these types of tools.
Before you know it, the "lowest cost" docketing vendor that promised the world to you, is now costing hundreds of thousands more in deployment. Now, you will be told that your data migration did not work, because you have bad data and you need to get your team attend their 5 day training program, adding huge "opportunity costs" and losing hundreds of hours of productivity.
What's more, these docketing tools are not flexible, and hard to configure causing frustration among your users and aggravate the already bad situation of excessive costs and wasted time.
The U.S. Department of Commerce study shows that software purchase expenditures account for only approximately 30 percent of the total. The biggest hidden cost is represented by labor expenditures ranging from 37 percent for support and 33 percent related to software getting the software up and running. The numbers translate to a ratio of 1:2, software license to management/labor costs; and 1:1 license fee to implementation.
IDC recently reported that "Many companies underestimate the cost of managing applications. When you consider the annual costs of administering the applications and the cost of managing issues around performance, changes and availability, it is most likely significantly greater than the application purchase price.<
Understanding the cost of patent docketing software means tracking all related expenditures across its life cycle: purchase/lease, implementation, training, support, maintenance and all subsequent upgrades. It is simpler said than done.
For many patent departments, the patent docketing software implementation is the first time they have been involved in a software project, and therefore are sometimes not aware of these challenges.
Patent Docketing Software implementation projects tend to have many hidden costs that you need to ensure are captured as part of you business case, and managed during the project. Example hidden costs are:
* Lost of productivity during implementation, such as re-training
* Lost of productivity through poor user support
* Opportunity cost of management
* Pilot costs
* Internal resources working on the project
* Internal marketing costs
* Change management
* Data conversion/Data cleansing costs
* Tech-savvyness
* User support both technical and business issues
* Ongoing software and hardware maintenance
Nailing down all of these costs will be difficult and sometimnearly impossible prior to procurement. However, making the effort to identify and estimate as many othese hidden costs will be well worth the exercise. Besides, no one likes iceberg surprises or hidden supplier hooks after the purchasing decision.
Lecorpio has an excellent track record of successful patent docketing software project implementations. Lecorpio's professional services use a powerful combination of strategic insight and superior execution to optimize the cost and efficiency of our client's IP operations. Feel free to contact us if you need more information on best practices for Intellectual asset management project implementation.
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Posted by Lecorpio Client Services on Sat, Jul 24, 2010
Many users of last generation patent docketing software feel that there is no reason to upgrade. Everything is working fine. Why rock the boat? If the patent department has established metrics to evaluate the performance of the patent docketing system, and the system is consistently meeting or exceeding the benchmark, then pat yourself on the back, because you rank higher among your peers. If that is not the case, then this is a good time for a change.
This post will help patent departments create meaningful metrics to measure the performance of their patent docketing system and revisit them whenever needed. Each patent department is unique and the metrics that work for one department may not work for another. The objective is to help IP departments develop and measure their own metrics to determine whether their patent docketing software is meeting the goals. Developing and measuring these metrics can provide a basis for setting goals and establishes whether there is improvement or progress toward those goals over time.
The key metrics can be categorized into one of these five areas:
1. Client Satisfaction
2. Knowledge Management
3. Outside Counsel Management
4. Team Effectiveness
5. Visibility
Client Satisfaction
For the IP department, the clients are inventors, patent committee, key subject matter experts and other stakeholders in technology and R&D groups. The metrics for client satisfaction include, but not limited to:
1. How easy is it for your inventors to submit new invention disclosures?
2. How easy is it for your inventors to track what is happening on their submitted disclosures or patent applications and patents?
3. Do they have visibility into their awards?
4. How easy is it for your patent committee members to provide their recommendations on invention disclosures?
5. How easy it is for the subject matter experts to interact with inventors for more effective review and analysis?
6. How easy is it for senior management in technology and R&D to view the overall patent portfolio and pipeline?
Knowledge Management
Without easy access to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed based on what the individual or group brings to the situation with them. With seamless access to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed with the sum total of everything anyone in the patent department has ever learned about a situation of a similar nature.
The metrics for knowledge management include, but not limited to:
1. Do you have established metrics and rationale for evaluating invention disclosures for patent filings? If you do, can it be applied across all decisions made in the last 3-4 years?
2. How easy is it for anyone to look at the foreign filing record and trace why the decision for this filing was taken?
3. How easy is it for someone to review annuity decisions and know who made the decision to maintain a particular patent and why?
4. How much time would it take for you to get a simple report, for example your entire patent portfolio grouped by jurisdiction and PTO status?
5. How much time would it take for you to project your overall spend for the next 3 months?
Outside Counsel Management
A number of patent departments use outside counsels for drafting, filing and prosecuting patent applications. The services provided by firm can account for 70% of the overall patent department budget. It is important to know if your existing patent docketing system can provide you metrics to measure their performance.
1. How easy is it for you to find out what each firm is handling and the latest status on filings for each firm?
2. How much time would it take for you to get a report of overall spend per firm?
3. How fast can you get the report of the turnaround time per firm?
4. Each time the OC needs to collaborate with inventors (for example in patent application drafting), do they have to go through your team? How much time do you spend coordinating these activities?
5. How much do you know about extensions filed by law firms on office action responses?
Team Effectiveness
Patent docketing software is expected to help your team get more effective. Here are some metrics to help you determine if it is meeting the expectations-
1. How much time is your team spending on emails for sending information to inventors, patent committee members, outside counsels?
2. How much time are they spending on duplicate entry of the same data in multiple systems?
3. How much paper are they printing?
4. How easy is it for them to delegate work to their colleagues?
5. How much time are they spending on calculating patent award payments?
Visibility
If you have been using the patent docketing software to track invention disclosures, patents, trademarks, licenses and invoices, you should be able to get answers to the following questions-
1. How much time would it take for you to view all invention disclosures, patents, trademarks and licenses by products, by technology areas and by business units?
2. How fast can your team get to all of their assigned tasks?
3. What visibility do you have into the workload of your team members and their average response time?
4. How soon can you view the established budgetary goals for the fiscal year and the spend and accruals so far?
5. How easy it for you to go to any record and find out the real time status?
Lecorpio IP management software is designed to provide answers to all of these questions. It automates all manual workflows, remove redundancies, and provide accurate reporting to help corporate IP departments better service their clients and better manage their service providers.
If it's not broken, that's a good thing - but not a good reason for staying on an old technology.
Sign up for a free demo and consultation on IP management software.
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Posted by Lecorpio Client Services on Sat, Jul 17, 2010
Intellectual Asset Management Software (often known as Patent Docketing Software) has the potential to transform the way patent departments relate to and even think about their role as providers of IP support services to the rest of the enterprise. The emergence of web based patent docketing software creates an opportunity for IP departments to change their focus from docket data entry to enterprise wide intellectual property asset management. A successful service-centric IP department, in turn, directly produces more value for the business by leveraging knowledge from both internal clients and external service providers and align closely with business goals.
Selecting the right patent docketing software can be a challenge. You can find a lot of information about patent docketing software evaluation online. This post provides some tips on getting acceptance from your IT department. For some patent departments, this can be overwhelming. The reason is not often not the budget, but the strenuous process of getting a new software. Lack of time and knowledge about the software only exacerbate the situation and many departments give up. Here are some points for you to prepare yourself when you bring IT department into the discussion.
Data Security
Patent data requires high level of security. Your IT department is likely to raise this as a concern, even more when your vendor is hosted your data outside your firewall. You should ensure that the potential patent docketing software vendor has measures in place to meet the standards.
Migration Plan
Your IT department would be concerned about the data migration plan. They would want to know if the data contained inside the patent docketing software application can be exported and moved into another one. How easy would that process be? You can check with prospective patent docketing software provider about any data-migration strategies and procedures it uses, including any provisions for data and code escrow.
Performance
Your IT department is likely to be interested in the service-level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee the level of performance, availability, and security that the patent docketing software will provide, and govern the actions the provider will take—or the compensation it will provide—in the event that it fails to meet these guarantees. You should check with your prosective vendors about these types of SLAs.
Integration
To maximize the benefits from patent docketing software, you may want to have an integration in place to activate new users and deactivate terminated employees automatically without any user intervention. This and other scenarios require integration between your patent docketing software and other corporate IT systems. Please ensure from your prospective vendor about the integration capabilities of their patent docketing software.
Lecorpio has an excellent track record of successful patent docketing software project implementations. Lecorpio's professional services use a powerful combination of strategic insight and superior execution to optimize the cost and efficiency of our client's IP operations. Feel free to contact us if you need more information on best practices for Intellectual asset management project implementation.
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Posted by Lecorpio Client Services on Sat, Jul 10, 2010
Patent Docketing Software can be a powerful asset to better manage your patent assets. Often known as intellectual property docketing software, patent docketing software can perform a host of functions.
Still, finding the right patent docketing software can be a challenge. That's because effective patent docketing is actually a process rather than a piece of software.
Ideally, your desire for process optimization drives the selection of software, and the software is chosen and implemented to fit the process. This approach will help you in ensuring your patent assets remain in a good shape. Here are some tips for finding the right fit when buying Patent Docketing Software:
Productivity Gains:
How the patent docketing software will fulfill the needs of all stakeholders requires a team effort, involving experts from the field, including patent attorneys, docketing paralegals; outside counsels; prolific inventors; patent committee members; and information technology (IT) managers.
The team's goal should be to provide the patent department with a consistent, effective tool to track invention disclosures and patents, identify areas for process improvement, and target better ways to spend patent annuity maintenance dollars. Pulling together as a team and developing, understanding and committing to a process can provide a good foundation upon which to deploy the software. Focus on areas that require the largest and most pressing improvements.
Cost Analysis:
Patent departments will need to keep a few things to keep in mind when considering purchasing or upgrading patent docketing software. Perhaps most importantly, the cost of implementation can be greater than the initial cost. Once the software is in place, the vendor and department need to set it up and populate it with the patents and invention disclosure related data. This process generally is expensive and time-consuming.
Focusing too much on sticker price can be misleading. Ask the references provided by vendors the time spent on implementation. If the implementation was tedious, if the vendor provided consistent support during and post implementation. Did the project go late and over budget and if it did, why?
Assess Strengths and Weaknesses:
The size of the docketing vendor organization can be misleading too. Most patent docketing software vendors make most of their revenues from annuity payment services. Product Innovation is certainly not the priority. Ask them about their product roadmaps. Are they making use of new technologies? Have they spent any time on innovation, new features in the last 1-3 years.
Configurability:
Lack of configurability is probably most overlooked area during selection process, but comes back to haunt you. On an average, the department requirements change by over 20% in first year and about 10% in second year of deployment. Check with vendors and their references if you need vendor's support for performing basic operations such as changing workflows or integration. Engineers are expensive, paying vendors for these types of changes can cost a lot of money, time and resources. Checking these questions upfront will go a long way in determining how much time and money will be spent to improve these systems.
Staffing
Check if your department is staffed properly to handle the project workload. Does it have the time and money to allocate to this project? The successful implementation of a patent docket software requires a top-down commitment from management and the support of the entire team.
Lecorpio has an excellent track record of successful patent docketing software implementations. Lecorpio's professional services use a powerful combination of strategic insight and superior execution to optimize the cost and efficiency of our client's patent operations. Feel free to contact us if you need more information on best practices for patent docketing software project implementation.
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Posted by Lecorpio Client Services on Mon, Jul 05, 2010
The trademark department within an enterprise plays an important role in securing and enforcing trademark rights including registered trademarks, service marks and trademarks in use. Some trademark departments also track registered domain names as well as copyrights.
Trademark management software must empower trademark department to better service their client's needs, secure the appropriate rights, notify them about important dates and help them implement the enforcement program effectively.
While trademark docketing alone may work well for your law firms; corporate legal departments should look at trademark management software to help them achieve complete lifecycle management.
Here are the top 5 features required for a robust trademark management software:
Comprehensive Functionality
A good trademark management software must have comprehensive features and functionality for trademark search request submission and review process, trademark docketing, trademark electronic case file repository, renewals, trademark licensing, trademark enforcement and policing, anti-counterfeiting, domain and copyright management.
Trademark docketing must include robust docketing features for all major jurisdictions including regular updates to local and international laws pertaining to trademark registration. The system should track all important docketing dates (statutory as well as soft reminders) and send reminder emails to pre-defined team members. Further, for process optimization, the system must provide checklists at various stages like filing, response to actions, and notice of allowance.
Collaboration and Workflow
Business users should be able to submit an online trademark request form for initiating trademark requests including the ability to upload various documents. The reviewers must be able to route the request to various teams for searching and/or approval. The details about the search performed including search results should be stored for future use.
For departments who are using outside counsels, the system should provide a workflow to engage an outside counsel for a trademark prosecution case. The outside counsels must be able to view and work on assigned tasks and upload drafts, responses and costs online. Each action should send automatic docketing notifications to the designated individuals within the department.
Reports and Analytics
The trademark management system must provide searches, reports and analytical tools to analyze portfolio as well as costs. Besides the standard ("canned") reports, the system must provide intuitive interface to customize existing reports without vendor assistance, provide ad hoc searching and reporting as well as ability to export search/report data to excel, PDF etc.
Configuration (and not customization)
The system must allow configuration of the online trademark request form, docketing as well as approval workflows by application administrators. As you select the best trademark management software for your needs, be sure you understand the difference between the configuration and customization and can clearly differentiate where certain functionality falls.
Lecorpio trademark management software provides a web based portal to marketing and branding teams to submit new search requests for clearance. It provides complete trademark lifecycle management including trademark search request submission and review; trademark docketing, filing, prosecution through registration; transactions including licensing, policing and oppositions.
Learn more about Lecorpio's IP Asset Management solution or IP Management Software-related products and more.
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Posted by Lecorpio Marketing on Sat, Jun 26, 2010
Patent departments are like no other. There are few business functions inside organizations that require the same level of globalized thinking, vendor management and client service.
Patent departments are also under constant pressure to deliver all this and more with limited budgets. Such requirements make their operations and delivery a bit unique and not so easy to understand.
IT departments often underestimate this complexity and suggest tools and products that are overly simplistic and place too much emphasis in data or document instead of process efficiencies. Most of these implementation fail to deliver.
Unfortunately, for decades these requirements were ignored by patent docketing software vendors. Most such vendors made a bulk of their revenues from annuity payment services and hence did not have any incentive to innovate or go up the value chain.
In the last few years, Lecorpio and some other vendors have championed the cause of IP management by providing process driven applications helping patent departments service their clients better and manage their service providers more effectively. Already, we are seeing increased momentum for change and successes to validate the need and value of an enterprise wide IP management system.
Here are some key peculiarities of patent management software deployment that the IT departments in mid-large size organizations may find useful-
Complex:
Indeed the patent business is complex. The complexity is stemmed from the need for an intimate knowledge of the legal and cultural aspects of each country in order to protect patents successfully and make them available to products or services that are on the market in various countries around the world. Patent management system must provide functionality to address these needs.
Unique:
Under budget pressures, most patent departments get creative and try to maximize their resources to the fullest extent. This makes their process unique from other organizations. While docketing function may be the same in most departments; Invention Disclosure Management, Open Source Management, Inventor Awards, International Filings, Patent Investigations and several other functions differ in companies. A cookie cutter approach does not work. The patent management system must be able to adapt to each patent department's unique processes.
Change Management:
Most departments have not been involved in any enterprise scale deployment and lack adequate IT support, the patent management software project often go though 20-30% requirements change after the deployment. This requires that the system of choice is able to handle these changes without issues. The cost of managing these change can spiral out of control if the system is inflexible and requires code changes for such requests.
High Expectations:
The patent departments place high expectations on IP software providers. In general, there is a lack of tolerance for errors which means you should check the references provided by patent management vendors throughly. Besides the product, ask them about issues faced during implementation, change management and support after "go live".
Several progressive IP departments have realized successes in automating manual operations and made their teams more effective by using Lecorpio's patent management system. Lecorpio patent management provides comprehensive features and functionality to manage invention disclosures, patents, docketing, licensing, conflicts, and budgeting. The applications are flexible and can easily adapt to each customer's unique requirements.
Learn more about Lecorpio's IP Asset Management solution or IP Management Software-related products and more.
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Posted by Lecorpio Marketing on Sun, Jun 13, 2010
A merger or acquisition isn't a success until integration is achieved. People, processes and systems need to be integrated into a cohesive entity. Each of these aspects has its own areas of complexity and requires different managerial skills.
From an IP Management Software standpoint, the diversity of the IP docketing systems and processes that existed in different entities now requires alignment. And the problem is compounded by the need for fast implementation.
Such an IP management software integration effort must essentially aim at integrating or consolidating intellectual asset management processes, eliminating duplicate IP docketing software systems, standardizing and conversing business-critical IP asset data and developing an overall implementation roadmap.
Post merger and acquisition, the Top 5 success factors for a successful IP management system migration include:
Get your vision down on paper
IP management integration is a multifaceted, multivariate problem requiring a solution that can analyze, evaluate, compare, and integrate the IP asset data from each of the merging organizations' core patent and trademark docketing management systems.
Establish key metrics to monitor your progress.
At a minimum, the plan must include:
- User Impact Analysis (including inventors, patent committee members, paralegals, internal and external patent counsels.
- Business process impact and consolidation of best practices.
- Risk assessment (including delays in recordation etc.)
- Data uniformity and data migration.
- Custom developments on the software for IP Management.
- Legacy docketing systems retirement.
- Testing and quality assurance
- Conversion and downtime impact
- Long-term support
Leverage Competencies
Too many patent departments have a very narrow focus during the post merger process, they focus too much on bibliographic and docketing data. There is no denying that docketing data is important, however don't let that drive the integration process. Post merger, both departments need to demonstrate features and capabilities provided by their systems and look for opportunities. The "not invented here" thinking should be banned. Just because an idea is originated from outside the acquiring organization does not make it redundant. The focus should be on leveraging the competencies of both companies.
Get Your Timing Right
After the merger, the intellectual property rights of the acquired company need to be transferred into the name of the new owner in each jurisdiction where such rights exist. Timely recordal of a change of ownership is critical to protect the ongoing validity and enforcement of intellectual property rights. This can drive the need
for fast migration. If the acquired entity have significant IP assets, break the data in parts and import it in phases. Here is the sequence that can help you get there:
Start with bibliographic data. Follow this with docketing, then IP licenses, IP assertions and other transactions, and finally invention disclosures.
It is a good idea to validate your plan with the IT department. For example, before you plan on transferring the data for invention disclosures, IT must allow employees of acquired entity an ability to log into the new system to view their past invention disclosures and submit new ideas.
Prepare for Data Issues
It is not uncommon to find companies use a broad mix of hardware, operating systems and software with patchwork maintenance. Over time, a company's IP management systems for invention disclosures, patent and trademark docketing, licensing and other related systems undergo incremental changes. This patchwork approach introduces data migration issues. Many times, inventor names are not matched against HR data. The products, technology areas and client groups need to be revised for the imported data. This requires a better understanding of data schema and tools for bulk update. It is better to do these changes prior to migrating the data into the final system.
Ongoing Training
During transition, it is important to have training materials ready and upto date. Clear and constant communication of vision, goals, and objectives can keep inventors, paralegals, patent committee members, In-house counsels and outside law firms on the same page and and help everyone to stay focused. It is important that all stakeholders are fully engaged and that training programs developed during integration planning are institutionalized.
Lecorpio IP management services have helped several IP departments consolidate multiple IP management systems into one by defining a common architecture for deploying
and enhancing the existing data from both organizations. Lecorpio provides services to cleanse, consolidate and standardize the data against public data sources for error-free operation of IP management system and ensure continuity and data integrity.
Learn more about Lecorpio's IP Asset Management solution or IP Management Software-related products and more.
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Posted by Lecorpio Marketing on Sun, May 23, 2010
Shortened product design and life cycles, the increased expense and uncertainty of R&D and the frequent need for non-resident technical skills or access to new markets, demand a variety of complex strategic arrangements with domestic and foreign entities. Now more than ever, progressive IP departments assert and/or license their IP to further their business interests, and they acquire rights to adversely owned technology and IP when its to their advantage.
Intellectual Property (IP) Transactions Management Software must provides tools and features that empower IP departments to take a long-term view of their IP portfolio and to seek and obtain protection for the core inventions that form the basis of their businesses, whether or not they intend to do anything with those protections in the near term.
Here are the top five features of a good Intellectual Property (IP) Transactions Management Software:-
Collaboration
IP Transactions Management software must provide a collaborative environment to all stakeholders including the IP department, General Counsel, Business Unit heads, CTO, lab heads, internal licensing teams and enable them to work together on the strategic and financial objectives to be achieved with the IP portfolio. The collaborative environment must support document sharing, feedback collection, and provide tools for strategizing, brainstorming and decision making.
Portfolio Management
Inadequate due diligence can result in overlooked and incorrectly valued IP and can leave undiscovered disputes over ownership or provenance of IP that is of critical importance to a transaction. IP Transactions Management must provide comprehensive support for IP portfolio management including ability to store third party profiles, real-time access to your patents, trademarks and other assets, third party patent and trademark repository etc. Further, it should allow IP managers to tag each asset by asset quality, geographic scope, legal strength, technical risks and cost burdens and help them in augmentation, prioritization and disposition of their IP assets. The result is a more focused portfolio to meet business needs and increase shareholder value.
Workflows
The IP Transactions Management software must provide robust workflows for IP In-licensing and Out-licensing, Patent purchase/sell, third party tracking, IP assertions and disputes management, IP research analysis and acquisition, defensive analysis decision and handling, litigation support work, IP investment research, IP competitive research, IP freedom to operate and IP landscape research, IP divestiture handling as well as enable tracking for IP standards participation.
Data Integration
IP Transactions Management software must have data integration capabilities to seamless integrate your internal data with public data from all major patent authorities including bibliographic, citations, legal status and patent family collections in one place. This will save you a lot of time in manual searching, storage and analysis.
Analytics
IP Transactions Management Software must provide tools to thoroughly understand the patent and trademark portfolio, by technology area, products or other metrics such as relevant markets, and combine that analysis with the relative positions and strategies of other market players within same technologies or markets.
Lecorpio Intellectual Property (IP) Transactions Management provides a centralized repository for different types of matters including disputes, assertions, investigations, freedom to operate, invalidation and product clearance analysis and generate reliable results for achieving business objectives. The robust workflow tools provides for the implementation of measures to ensure protection and commercial exploitation of valuable assets and investments made in research and development.
Learn more about Lecorpio's IP Asset Management solution or IP Management Software-related products and more.
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Posted by Lecorpio Marketing on Mon, May 17, 2010
Globalization, mergers, consolidations, and other factors are changing the ways that companies do business - including how they hire and retain outside law firms. In-house patent counsels now expect a high level of expertise as well as greater responsiveness from outside counsels.
IP docketing software can help IP departments achieve higher efficiencies, but full success is dependent upon the acceptance by outside counsels. Here are five tips to get outside counsels' use your patent docketing software:
Engaging User Experience
The User Experience, or how your outside counsels experience their portal, is the key to acceptance. If outside counsels feel it is not easy to learn, not easy to use, or too cumbersome, an otherwise excellent patent docketing software could fail.
Operations should be achieved with a minimum of user activity. Too much "mousing around" means less time spent doing real work. For example, features that require a stream of menu options and parameter settings to perform a single operation are clumsy.
Avoid overloading the outside counsel with too much docketing data in a screen layout; you don't have to fill every pixel on the screen. If the pertinent docket action cannot fit comfortably in one screen panel then divide it logically and use as many screens as required.
In short, keep the user interface clear, consistent and simple.
Full Functional System
It is important that the patent management software provides robust functions and features for docketing. The outside counsels should be able to provide you all details on your matters via a single interface and should not have to use emails to support the data uploaded in the patent management database.
At the minimum, it should provide filing history to upload data and documents, patent and publication references, patent families and other types of correspondence.
Many Law firms are still using legacy docketing systems, which lack the ability to correlate data and documents. Such firms will find this feature useful and hence give more importance to your patent docketing system.
Integrated External and Internal Processes
Treat outside counsels as an extension to your internal team. The patent management system must allow seamless collaboration between different participants such as outside counsels, in-house counsels, paralegals, docketing clerks, inventor and other stakeholders.
A patent docketing system where outside counsels can collaborate with Inventors for tasks such as drafts review, formal document generation and in-house team for estimates and invoices review is likely to get more attention.
Integrated Decision Making
The patent docketing system must provide integrated decision making in the workflow processes. In the patent lifecycle, there are several situations where such decisions are required. Examples include international filings, divisional, continuation or CIP filings, annuity payments etc. The patent docketing system should enable you to enter decisions and instructions and communicate them to the outside counsels. This will help your outside counsels refer to your decisions easily and will reduce their dependence on emails.
Visibility
Most law firms have very limited visibility into corporate strategic initiatives for patent portfolio management. The matter centric approach is too limiting and does not allow them to view information that may be useful for patent filings or prosecution. The patent docketing software must provide them greater visibility into related technology matters, prior art and other documentation. The patent docketing system should also provide them tools to analyze the "portfolio" of matters they or their firm is responsible for. This will help them in better preparation of their matters and will enhance their satisfaction with your system.
Lecorpio IP management software applications are very intuitive and easy to understand. The "à la carte" model allows IP departments to implement a practical phased implementation of each application. Lecorpio IP management implementation methodology focuses on enabling the end user, this approach provides faster ROI.
Learn more about Lecorpio's IP Asset Management solution or IP Management Software-related products and more.
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Posted by Lecorpio Marketing on Sat, May 08, 2010
In the last 2-3 years, several progressive IP departments have adopted a documented, systematic, and timely process for the analysis, protection, and commercialization of their intellectual property. Here are the top 5 features of Invention Disclosure Management software that can help IP departments reduce cycle time to process new ideas, automate manual operations, structure processes and improve inventor satisfaction.
Electronic Submission
The purpose of an invention disclosure is to capture the minimum information sufficient to allow the company to evaluate investing in an idea. The electronic submission process ensures that the IP department is getting consistent disclosures, in the same format, capturing the same type of information. It is important to make the submission process as simple as possible. An inventor should be able to log in and complete the form online in a few steps.
Collaboration and Communication
During the invention disclosure review process, a number of questions typically go back and forth between patent counsels, paralegals, administrative staff, subject matter experts, patent committee and law firms. Without centralized collaboration system, these conversations usually take place via emails with no tracking mechanism.
Invention Disclosure Management Software must provide a platform for seamless collaboration and communication between different participants in the process while tracking each and every communication within a secure environment.
Rating and Analysis
The software must be able to assign subject matter experts and patent committee members automatically and provide them an easy to use interface to review the disclosures prior to the meeting.
Further, the patent committee members should be able to use an objective criteria for evaluating invention disclosures on the basis of technical merit, relevance to company objectives, relationship to the existing portfolio, commercial viability etc.
Review and Approval
One key benefit from a structured invention disclosure process is the ability to view and defer unnecessary costs by vetting ideas earlier in the development cycle.
After the initial analysis and recommendation by patent committee members, the invention disclosure management system should submit the disclosure to patent counsel for legal review and a final decision on filing. Invention disclosures not filed for patent protection and retained as trade secrets should also be documented.
Analytics and Reporting
Invention Disclosure Management Software must provide sophisticated searching and reporting tools as well as real-time analytical insight into the productivity and performance of the entire process to improve decision-making. This analysis would help in revealing the hidden factors driving and inhibiting innovation planning and performance.
Lecorpio invention disclosure management is the only application that fully adapts to the unique needs of each organization. Today, some of the best known companies are using Lecorpio to bring together corporate legal departments, inventors and other stake holders fully collaborating as a single collective entity to manage innovations.
Learn more about Lecorpio's IP Asset Management solution or IP Management Software-related products and more.
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