As Presented May 9, 2024, to the IP Counsel Cafe Annual Meeting

In the rapidly evolving landscape of intellectual property management, patent departments face increasing demands for efficiency, integration, and operational innovation. As technology advances—driven most recently by AI—and global competition intensifies, the need for a transformative approach to patent operations becomes imperative. This discussion presents five important trends that are redefining patent department operations. These trends, fueled by technology innovations and new operating models, promise to streamline processes, enhance collaboration, and optimize the management of intellectual property. By building capabilities consistent with these trends, patent departments can achieve significant competitive advantages and operational excellence.

Patent departments today face the challenge of managing a complex set of contributors involved in the IP lifecycle, including internal stakeholders, outside counsel, ex-U.S. associates, PTOs, and service providers. The lack of standardized data, disparate workflows, and high transaction costs are significant hurdles, as business processes often span multiple systems without integration. This fragmentation leads to inefficiencies, increased costs, and potential errors, making it difficult to maintain a smooth and cohesive operational flow.

The new integrated approach, such as RightHub’s platform, creates an environment where participants work in a common platform and with common data standards. By lowering transaction inefficiencies, processing times can be reduced by up to 30%, directly lowering operational costs and expediting patent issuance. An integrated approach also enhances the overall agility and effectiveness of the IP management process, positioning organizations to better capitalize on their intellectual property assets.

The IP process involves inventors, business managers, attorneys, outside counsel, and agents, each contributing in related but different ways. The information and functional needs for each of these contributors can differ significantly. The challenge is that today’s general-purpose systems are not tailored to these specific needs, resulting in poor engagement.

The deployment of purpose-built ‘apps’ that provide each role the right information and tools significantly enhances user engagement and productivity. Built on top of an integrated platform, RightHub provides apps that are designed for specific purposes helping to ensure that users can easily participate in the process. Apps can reduce the user learning curve and streamline tasks tailored to individual roles. This approach leads to a measurable increase in productivity of 20-25%, alongside a reduction in training and onboarding time by up to 50%, enhancing user satisfaction and participation.

For most organizations, their IP management systems are SaaS-based product solutions: monolithic, all-inclusive, offering one-size-fits-all functionality. While meeting general requirements, the need for business-aligned information and workflows are either impossible or extremely expensive. Moreover, these systems can be challenged to work with other systems, leading to disconnected data and processes. The result is an IPMS that is sufficient but not adequate to the needs of the organization.

The emerging trend are platform-based solutions built on top of enterprise architectures that provide the advantages of traditional IPMS products but with the flexibility to configure and integrate with other data and systems. For example, the RightHub Enterprise solution is built on the Microsoft Power Platform, providing organizations a leading IPMS system plus native integration to Microsoft Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, Office, Power Bi, and other tools. Users can work in and across their normal day-to-day tools, thereby improving the efficiency and quality of their work product. This adaptability can drastically reduce IT overhead and enhance the ability to respond to changes, ensuring that the patent operations are always cutting-edge. The transition to PaaS reduces IT development and maintenance costs by up to 40% and improves system adaptability by 60%, lowering the total cost of ownership with cloud-based solutions.

IP practitioners have long utilized technology for document management, workflow enhancements, and basic automation, as well as search and analytics as a core part of their practice. As AI has rapidly entered the toolset, early applications of generative AI have focused on content-related tasks such as patent classification and drafting. These innovations have provided useful advancements, yet they have been somewhat isolated, focusing more on improving substantive attorney work rather than transforming overarching operational workflows.

The emerging trend is the integration of automation-focused AI with content-centric generative AI to build new applications capable of managing complex workflows. This combination of process automation and substantive work product enables true end-to-end AI workflows. Such tools not only streamline operations but also maintain high accuracy and efficiency. Implementing AI, such as RightHub's Copilot, automates routine tasks, reducing workload and minimizing human error in processes like docketing and client communications. This automation reduces operational costs by up to 30% while improving task accuracy and reducing human error by 50%. It also allows staff to focus on higher-value tasks, significantly increasing the overall value of the department.

Today's patent departments are challenged to meet the needs of an increasingly complex work environment. Growing work volumes, constrained budgets, and difficulties in recruiting qualified, experienced staff are common issues. These challenges are exacerbated by changing expectations regarding work environments and preferences for remote or flexible working arrangements. This evolving landscape necessitates a fundamental rethinking of how companies manage their IP operations to remain effective and competitive.

Managed IP operations present an alternative strategy that addresses these multifaceted challenges while optimizing internal team dynamics. This approach integrates both technological solutions and professional expertise within a service agreement framework, effectively extending the capabilities of internal teams without traditional outsourcing. Managed services are designed to act as a seamless extension of the company's existing IP department, providing specialized support that enhances efficiency and strategic focus, allowing internal teams to concentrate on high-value, strategic IP activities. A managed services partnership reduces associated costs by up to 25%, increases focus on strategic activities by 40%, and enhances scalability and flexibility in resource allocation.

Patent department operations are rapidly evolving, driven by critical challenges such as the increasing complexity of global portfolios, heightened workloads, and evolving workforce dynamics. Innovation in both technology and process improvement offers exciting opportunities to address these challenges. The integration of advanced platforms, tailored applications, flexible service models, and AI-driven processes are new ways that patent departments can enhance their operational efficiency and improve the strategic management of IP. These innovative trends not only streamline patent operations but also empower departments to adapt to changing demands effectively. RightHub is at the forefront of these trends by offering targeted solutions that optimize patent management practices, thereby ensuring that departments can leverage technology and expertise to stay competitive and resilient in the ever-changing IP arena.

RightHub is a collaborative and inclusive platform for managing and enforcing innovation and ideas. It's built by experienced people passionate about perfecting solutions that allow people to work smarter solving difficult problems in the IP space. Our platform is connected, reliable, intuitive, profoundly efficient, automated and very powerful. It's (potentially) also the only one you'll ever need. We named it RightHub to signify one hub for everything IP.

Please visit https://righthub.com for more information

Ralph Schroeder leads RightHub’s North American business, working with both corporate IP departments and law firms to improve their IP operations. Over the course of his 25 year career, Ralph has worked with many leading innovator, brand companies, and solution providers across the full spectrum of IP management activities. Please contact Ralph at rschroeder@righthub.com