Tech has had a huge impact on the IP management profession.
It’s already made it faster and simpler to manage an IP portfolio, and professionals worldwide have seen a huge boost from IP management systems like Equinox.
In 2024, IP management tech is on track to deliver even more benefits, so we’re exploring what’s on the horizon.
The IP industry is becoming more integrated
The relationship between IP management systems, official offices, and IP services has gotten closer in recent years. This new era of integration has paved the way for IP professionals to oversee the whole intellectual property lifecycle with more manageable processes.
2024 should see a range of products and services begin to leverage these new technologies, allowing more to be done in fewer places, meaning less system switching for the end user. IP management systems like Equinox can now directly access case data from official offices, making it much easier to keep your portfolio up to date.
Equinox is also a member of the European Patent Office API pilot scheme group, where we’re helping develop an integration system that could hugely benefit IP professionals. As a firm that’s in regular technical talks with many other PTOs and other data-centric businesses in the industry, Equinox is at the forefront of this development.
Consolidation is becoming the new standard
Managing an IP portfolio relies upon a huge range of services and data, and IP professionals are increasingly requesting (and expecting) to be able to manage their IP portfolio, their IP law rules and their communications with both clients and colleagues in one place.
There is also a growing demand to be able to manage other services from within the same platform such as ordering translations and requesting renewal payments.
Industry professionals are turning to IP management systems like Equinox to access all their tools in one convenient location. This brings massive efficiency gains and often considerable cost savings as you wave goodbye to redundant subscriptions. This has pushed suppliers to find smart ways to bring these capabilities and services together into a ‘one-stop shop’, and you can expect to see more of this in 2024.
Equinox has already made great strides in this area. You can manage emails, document management, renewals, and finance from within the system, plus access official office data from a variety of sources. As part of Questel, we’re integrating our system with a huge variety of IP services within the Equinox platform to deliver unparalleled efficiency benefits.
Artificial intelligence is on the horizon.
“Over the next 5-to-10-year period, I can see there being a large transformation in technology products as they start to utilise and leverage artificial intelligence with huge implications for the IP management profession”
—Sam Nicholson, Managing Director
Artificial intelligence was one of the buzzwords of 2023, and the phenomenon will only grow in 2024. AI offers the opportunity to handle lengthy tasks in a fraction of the time and deliver personalised support to IP professionals around the clock.
Here are a few tasks we think AI will help IP professionals with in the future.
Template creation
There’s potential for the automated creation of structured responses and templates that can be used in correspondence and document drafting. While existing templates have already sped things up, AI could fill in case-specific information on your behalf to deliver further efficiency benefits.
Response drafting
AI could be trained to learn staff’s writing styles. This would allow it to assess either short-form user-created summaries or even actual emails from clients and draft responses to them in the user’s own words and communication style. The system could then propose this response for approval to save the user’s valuable time.
Report creation
Providing AI with a data set and asking it to create a report could be a huge time saver. There are plenty of existing tools that make producing reports easier, but AI has the potential to make quicker and more personalised reports.
ChatGPT style plugins
When ChatGPT came onto the scene, professionals in every industry found a way for it to help them with everything from report and presentation structures to essays and coding. A ChatGPT style plugin could connect to a system like Equinox to process tasks on the behalf of the user.
“a client might email Equinox asking for a first filing to be started in the UK, and the AI parses that email and automatically calls the Equinox APIs to follow the first filing process for the firm. For example, this could include creating a matter, gathering the required information from the client via email, and drawing up tasks— essentially, it will be automating a lot of administrative work”
—Sam Nicholson, Managing Director
Document classifying and parsing
One of the simplest ways AI could have an impact is by organising and triaging communications and documents.
Assessing and recognising correspondence could reduce administration time by automatically organising files into their relevant categories. Plus, AI could pull data from these documents and send it where it needs to go in your system. In Equinox, for example, this could pull the filing number from an official office document and automatically insert that document into the corresponding case with no human interaction required.
The future of IP management could be closer than you think
Equinox is paving the way for the development of IP management systems into smart, efficient tools for every IP professional.
Try Equinox and see how our clever system can magnify your abilities and help you thrive.
