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The Business Benefits of a Modern IP Management System

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We faced big challenges with our old system. We actually had two systems, one for docketing of our due dates and one that served as document repository. It was really difficult to work with two separate systems that really didn’t talk to each other. The system wasn’t very user friendly, and a lot of patent professionals, including attorneys simply didn’t use the system. It made their life really difficult, because it was really hard for them to make good business decisions without having an overview of their portfolio. Our previous system was, unfortunately, really, really old and the issue we had was that we had to enter all of our due dates manually and also calculate the dates manually, as well. That, of course, created a lot of risks for errors. Because of that we had to triple our QC. We had three different QC checks to ensure that our due dates were docketed correctly.

Anaqua has definitely helped us with simplifying our docketing system and our docketing processes, and it made it more secure. First of all, we use different prosecution templates in Anaqua, which allowed us to eliminate that manual data entry process. We also utilized the order docketing function in Anaqua where our due dates are basically docketed automatically by the system. All we have to do is perform a quick QC check. That has definitely helped us simplify our docketing processes and make it more secure.

I’m happy to say that all of our patent attorneys are utilizing the system. They feel very comfortable going into the system, searching for records, getting the information they need, and some of them even run reports in Anaqua. Attorneys have good overview of the cases they are responsible for, their portfolios, and it allows them to make good business decisions, communicate better with R&D, and make good funding decisions. Anaqua helped improve our communication both within our patent organization as well as communication with our stakeholders outside of the patent department.

Before Anaqua we had a system that was not intuitive whatsoever. There was no automation. There was no work flow. It was pretty much just very stagnant. You put in your actions and there was no management of the whole IP, whereas Anaqua is whole IP management system, so that has helped us. We have a lot of insight into our portfolio because of that. It’s a big difference. We have work flows that we created in Anaqua which we never had. It’s nice to say, “This is how we want to work. This is how we are working,” and having that through the system makes a big difference. There’s a lot of efficiencies that way. The automation was a big sell in the beginning for us, and having electronic documents and having this all in one place. There’s a collaboration going on. You have your internal people going in, your docketors going in, your attorneys going in, and everybody can see all these documents in one place.

The main advantages now is that we have the business coming to us asking us about our IP portfolio, so being able to now classify all of our portfolio in terms of commercial products, technologies, that’s a big deal, because now we know where we have our strengths, where we may be lacking. Maybe we need to license here. Maybe we can license this out. It’s having the insight into the portfolio and being able to provide those reports to our executives.