For anyone managing a patent portfolio, Equinox has a suite of tools that will magnify their abilities.
We have developed and incorporated specialist tools designed to streamline tasks specific to patent management, making it faster and less resource-intensive to achieve your targets. These tools are utilized by hundreds of IP professionals across the world in law firms and corporate teams of every scale.
In this article, we’ll break down our purpose-built patent tools and illustrate the results they could deliver for you.
Specialist patent management tools
Nationalise PCT tool
Manually creating cases for your national and regional phase entry applications can be time-consuming. Copying data over from the parent PCT application takes up valuable resources. That’s where the Nationalise PCT tool comes in.
The tool helps you easily create cases for national and regional phase entry applications, covering any country within the Patent Cooperation treaty. For the Nationalisation of PCT cases, we have built and refined specialist pre-set processes you can add to your system that ensure your management tasks are in line with the requirements of official offices.
The main details of the original case will be copied to the national case(s), including case titles, case users, client details, default case dates, and case contacts (like applicants and inventors).
The national cases you’ve created will automatically be added to the case family and be visible from the Family tab in your Equinox system.
Automating this task significantly reduces both the time taken to create these cases and the chance of human error. The system copies the information across for you, so you can focus on the bigger picture.
Validate EP tool
This functionality enables users to quickly create validation cases for existing European patents within the system. The tool opens validation of EP cases in your selected countries, copying data from the parent EP patent.
In simple terms, the Validate EP tool lets you quickly create validation cases for any country within the European Patent Organisation. This simple function further reduces the administrative burden of processing patents throughout the intellectual property lifecycle.
As with the Nationalise PCT tool, the validation cases you have created will automatically be added to the case family and be visible from the Family tab.
Unitary Patent
Our talented team of developers always keeps a close eye on changes in the industry. So, when the Unitary Patent system came into effect, we had purpose-built functionality ready for our subscribers to use.
Equinox is based around pre-set processes that help you keep on top of your portfolio management tasks. The system tells you what needs doing and when, and even automates many functions to take them off your plate. For the Unitary Patent, we refined our pre-sets to ensure your processes are in line with the requirements of official offices. For example, we created additional date fields for handling Unitary Patents to capture the extra information for both the Request for Unitary Effect and the Registration of Unitary Effect.
Plus, the weekly email and newsletter bring together updates from various sources and jurisdictions into one place, including any amendments to our pre-set processes. This allows users to keep their processes up to date at the click of a button and reduces the time taken to amend their tasks. We do the research for you to ensure you’re always up to date and delivering for your organisation or clients.
Helpful integrations
When you’re handling a large portfolio, ensuring your case data is aligned with official offices can be a challenge. To make this process a little smoother, we’ve integrated Equinox with official offices.
We’ve integrated Equinox with the MyEPO Mailbox from the European Patent Office. This allows subscribers to receive EPO communications directly through their Equinox system, triggering pre-set processes and saving official correspondence.
For our subscribers, this streamlines the process of managing European patent cases and simplifies keeping those cases up to date with official office activity.
If you’re managing patents in the European market, this integration is going to save you time.
It massively reduces the time you spend managing EPO communications and documentation, and in conjunction with our advanced automation tools, could reduce the overall administration time you need to spend on European patent cases.
For IP professionals operating in the U.S. market, Equinox is also integrated with the USPTO. Any USPTO notifications will be sent directly to Equinox, appearing in the PTO Notifications section. Again, this can trigger any pre-set processes you’ve set up for your cases and any associated automation.
These official office integrations serve to simplify the IP professional’s daily experience, making it easier to manage a patent portfolio and ultimately allowing more time to focus on value-adding activities for your organisation or clients.
Simplifying patent management
Whether you’re managing patents for clients or in-house for an organisation, Equinox has the tools you need to protect your portfolio with efficiency and ease.
Try a demo with our friendly Equinox experts and start using a system that will maximise your impact.
