Enabling Collaboration in the IP Industry – Anaqua Connect™

For IP professionals looking to the future, the automation of IP operations is crucial. With the release of Anaqua Connect™, law firms and corporations can eliminate the need for double docketing, increase efficiency and minimize risk by automating IP data exchange, and collaborate more efficiently.

Anaqua Connect is just the latest step in our product strategy. The core driver of the creation and development of Anaqua's Law Firm Business Unit was to provide more value to our law firm customers by continuously evolving and investing in our products and people.

The key to this is listening to our customers. Our law firm customers look to us to help improve collaboration with their corporate clients, reduce the risk of data entry, and standardize processes. Our corporate customers want us to help them drive operational efficiency and find easier ways to work with their outside counsel. What we've done with Anaqua Connect is to come up with a solution to enable the IP community to take the first step in doing this.

Building a Connection

What if you could automatically exchange data between your law firm’s IP database and your client’s IP database? With Anaqua Connect you can.

Anaqua Connect offers a secure portal to enable law firms to enter their information in their IP database and have it immediately transferred over to the client’s system. Law firms can meet client demand safely and securely, while massively reducing the burden and risk of double docketing manually.

We’re not just talking about transferring data though. Anaqua Connect enables users of AQX Law Firm and soon in PATTSY WAVE to have that same automation on their side of their IP management software. In the first phase of AQX 10.6 release, law firms can send their docketing data directly to their corporate clients to reduce double docketing activities.

Corporations know that working and collaborating with their law firms is crucial—on average, 50% of the legal work corporations do is done in collaboration with their outside counsel. Anaqua Connect builds the platform for law firms and their clients to easily engage with each other, streamline communication, and in doing so strengthen their relationships.

The more effectively companies and law firms work together, the faster they can make advances and focus on higher-value activities. What is perhaps less obvious is how increasing automation can provide numerous benefits.  When you continue to identify manual tasks and find ways to automate them, both costs and risks start to shrink. IP professionals are traditionally risk-averse so the opportunity to lower risks should be grasped with both hands.

Embracing Automation

Importantly for law firms, with the introduction of automation, the difficulty and dangers of double docketing are now a thing of the past. The challenge of double docketing is often spoken about but rarely acted upon. Double docketing is time-consuming and expensive with the potential for errors due to manual intervention. Automation ensures better data quality, helps to mitigate risk, and aids in increasing collaboration.

When you are docketing more than once, there is an increased chance that you will input the wrong data or even fail to input it all together. Additionally, there is a heavy responsibility on law firms to ensure accuracy and missing a deadline can lead to costly consequences.

For those law firms that haven’t adopted an automated system, docketing is a multi-step process. Add double docketing processes in a client’s system and the number of steps in the process heads into the double digits. We’ve figured out the ‘secret formula’ to alleviate the burden and pain of double docketing and reduce the number of steps in the process for IP professionals.

As my colleague Fernando Maiques, Director of Product Management at Anaqua, says: “I’m very proud to say that, with the help of working groups and customer input, we’ve developed a true solution to double docketing. The solution helps us progress towards our ultimate ambition: supporting the true IP ecosystem—the connection of clients to law firms.”