In addition to maintaining consistency throughout the application, automation of routine tasks and real-time error checking, the integrated Rowan Patents patent drafting software provides another benefit to both the corporate client and to the law firms they work with: workflow management.

The workflow starts with invention disclosures captured at the corporation, then reviewed by an invention manager, who then makes a decision to send to an outside firm for drafting. All happening within an online end-to-end solution that has different levels of access. All the analytics on that disclosure are captured within the system.

Your outside practitioner comes into work and logs in to your secure system to do their drafting. As the patent manager, you can monitor, review, run analytics, and participate throughout that process. Together, the corporation and the law firm have eliminated the security concerns that inevitably come with trading drafts of documents back and forth via email. When the draft is ready to be submitted to the client, it is run through all the standard review functionality that you have built into your system, to ensure that patent managers aren’t spending time on tasks that are better done by a computer. This allows the head of the patent management team to focus on the substantive items. The invention manager looks at it in the same system as the patent manager. All the relevant sections are flagged for discussion, and comments are made in the system. As the last step, the document is exported for filing. And when the application comes back from the PTO, it comes back into the same system. You then make a decision based on what happened at the PTO in the first Office action, whether you want the same firm to keep representing on that matter or if you want to hand off the patent prosecution to someone else. In the event a practitioner has moved on, you have a continuous system with all the data and the history for the next who picks it up. Patent applications move in years, not months, so turnover is a reality.

Because in the end, a patent is everything. The patent isn’t the application. It is not frozen when you file it. The patent includes the whole file history. Everything you do in patent prosecution, every amendment you make becomes part of the asset.

And the scenario above captures all of that every step of the way. Does it exist yet? Not quite, but close, and an integrated solution provides the solution that gets you there.

This future exists because Rowan Patents provides a patent practitioner with an integrated drafting environment, not a point solution like ClaimMaster, Juristat, PatentOptimizer, or Patent Advisor. While each of these add value to one step of the process, they cannot optimize the entire process the way Rowan Patents can.

The integrated Rowan Patents patent drafting software provides another benefit to both the corporate client and to the law firms they work with: workflow management.