Anaqua Press Release

Oct 04 - ANAQUA Wins Gold Medal for Business Achievement

ANAQUA WINS GOLD MEDAL FOR FORD AND BAT AT BRITISH COMPUTER SOCIETY AWARDS

ANAQUA, the web-based management system for administering intellectual property (IP) rights developed jointly by Ford Motor Company and British American Tobacco, was Gold Medallist in the Commercial and Industrial category of the annual BCS IT Business Achievement Awards on October 19th.

The British Computer Society is the Industry body for Information Technology Professionals in the UK and the leading Chartered Engineering Institution for IT. The goals of the BCS include setting the highest professional standards for the IT Industry, and fostering the development of cutting edge products and services.

The purpose of the BCS Business Achievement Awards is to recognize and reward exceptional performance and innovation over three main assessment criteria:

• Impact on the performance of the organization
• Effectiveness of relationships among the involved parties
• Management of the development, implementation and operation of the system.

ANAQUA is the first IP management system nominated for such a BCS award. The system was developed by combining and then improving Ford’s and BAT’s respective legacy systems for managing their IP rights. ANAQUA is a highly user-friendly, web-based software package which is scalable and adaptable for use both by leading and smaller IP owners and by their law firms and IP agents internationally. ANAQUA’s exceptional value is that it encourages and supports collaboration between IP owners, clients and professional firms. It enables them together to identify, protect and manage Inventions, Patents, Trademarks, Conflicts and Agreements of global and small companies. By inter-connecting all types of IP, companies are empowered to make more informed decisions. ANAQUA also enables IP owners to address corporate governance issues more effectively and maintain an inventory of the company’s most valuable assets. ANAQUA, and systems like it that will follow in the future, will help transform the delivery of legal services worldwide.

Dr Stuart Ward, Chairman of the panel of assessors for the award said “We were looking for IT projects managed with flair, which deliver big, even transformational, benefits. The entrants certainly came up trumps this year. Selecting the medallists was no easy task”. Dr Ward is formerly Director of Business Improvement at British Energy PLC. He is an Associate Consultant of The IMPACT Programme and Chairman of the Aslib Knowledge and Information Management Network.