Patent Professional Benefits

More Defensible Claims, Fewer Errors
Automatically ensure claim terms are used consistently, supported in specification, and called out in drawings. Eliminate the drudgery of manual validation.

Prepare Applications in Less Time
Effortlessly cite part references, place callouts, and understand claim dependencies. Clients can review and markup drafts without disrupting your workflow.

Text And Drawings In One Place
Figures are attached to the specification and share a single revision history. Text and drawings can be edited by attorneys, draftspeople, and inventors without installing any software.

How should I evaluate whether TeamPatent is useful to me (should I use TeamPatent for writing applications from scratch or to validate existing applications)?
Patent professionals typically begin evaluating our software by importing a published patent to see what tools are available (enter the patent number in the dashboard or use the bookmark on our homepage).  Then they paste in an application they're working on from MSWord and use TeamPatent to find errors.  Later, professionals begin authoring their applications entirely within TeamPatent.

Should I seek permission from my client to use TeamPatent?
Patent professionals often share client matter with outside contractors who are bound to confidentiality (e.g. draftspeople) without client approval.  TeamPatent's privacy policy binds us to confidentiality so you may treat this as similar to working with a draftsperson.  This privacy policy was written by a patent attorney user to satisfy his standard of care requirements.  Note, as you develop confidence working with TeamPatent, you'll likely want to share TeamPatent documents with clients.

David Kappos, the new USPTO director, is a strong proponent of technology for evaluating patent applications. He specifically calls for automated tools that ensure terms used in the claims have also been used and defined in the specification and that elements used in the drawings have been described and explained in the specification. In this interview on May 8, 2009, he describes how this benefits applicants:

"Patent Quality Index (PQI): By quality, I mean whether the prior art has been cited and applied, whether terms used in the claims have also been used and defined in the specification, have elements used in the drawings have been described and explained in the specification...What you'd think of as a patent that's clear and comprehensible...those are the basic parameters.

How does PQI help applicants? This is a statistically-based engine that will evaluate in an automated fashion a patent application which is either ready to be filed or has been filed and provides a numerical score and a basis for the numerical score....in other words, an explanation of what was found to be problematic in the patent application. The way I'd be ready to use this at IBM...is to run each application through that tool and evaluate the results. If there are terms that are being used in the claims which are not used or defined anywhere in the specification or drawings, we're going to take a look at those terms and make sure we add a glossary or somehow define them appropriately. I'm going to use that as an applicant to improve the applications I'm filing with examiners, hopefully cutting down on rate of objections and rejections, enabling examiners to get into the applications more quickly, and hopefully give me better objections and rejections, and hopefully getting me to grant more quickly. As an applicant, I see a lot of upside to have a tool like this; an automated way to make sure I have all the right stuff in the applications I'm filing and they're going to be ready to be examined and granted as patents."

- David Kappos, USPTO Director
"IP Outlook in the Reform Era", Webinar with Jon Dudas

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