Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) Management

An information disclosure statement (often abbreviated as IDS) refers to a submission of relevant background art or information to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by an applicant for a patent during the patent prosecution process.

The disclosure statements provide the USPTO with a list of patents, patent publications, patent applications, non patent literature and statements made by the USPTO in related applications or other references and must include copies of all documents other than United States patents, patent publications or patent applications.

For an IP department, this means compiling a list of all references which an IP attorney has determined are both related to a given patent application and appropriate for disclosure to the USPTO.

In most patent departments, the IDS submission process is manual and time-consuming. It poses a risk to patent protection if the IDS is incomplete and can cause substantial costs on the department if not submitted on time.

Lecorpio patent management system includes a robust and easy to use IDS module for managing the IDS submission process more efficiently.

Key Features:

Centralized Reference Library

Lecorpio IDS Module provide an ability to upload references. The intelligent entry forms are able to differentiate between different types of references.

Each reference uploaded into Lecorpio IDS Module is stored in a centralized repository and can be searched for future use. The users are able to link references to patent applications and provide contextual information about citations.

Full text searches as well as boolean searches can be performed on any field in the reference library.

The system interfaces with several public data sources and provide the ability to download data directly into Lecorpio.

Review and Approval Workflow Management

The IDS module provide tools for an internal review by attorneys and paralegals. This review process enable users to determine which references should be included in the IDS or Supplemental IDS and which ones to be excluded.

The system notifies all responsible parties of new references or citations entered and changes to the patent status and creates new action items for filing supplemental IDS.

Form Generation

The IDS manager module provides sophisticated form generation including 1449, SB/08A and SB/08B forms. The forms generated are editable and can be modified before submission.

Auditing

The IDS module tracks history of each reference including the source, patents where it was cited where it wasn't cited, as well as updates to patent applications at publishing, abandonment and patenting events.

Configurability

Lecorpio IDS management module is very configurable and so it works the way you do rather than making you conform to its working style. New Fields can be added any time without any programming. The administrators can configure the user interface with a few clicks.