IP law firms and IP in-house counsel across Europe are raising the bar with data and workflow automation. This is the principal takeaway from six months of developing case studies with a half-dozen ipQuants customers. Accessing our EPO prosecution analytics insights, available via our Qthena platform, provide significant advantages to every IP law firm or team, regardless of size. Consider the enthusiasm of IP veteran Dr. Eva Willnegger, who runs a nano IP law firm in Brussels.
“Qthena is a game-changer. That’s an overused word but it is a game-changer in the sense that it is the first one to offer European patent examiner statistics and file management.”
It’s similar to the experience of Eisenführ Speiser Partner Klaus Göken, one of more than 80 attorneys at the German juggernaut. He’s equally convinced of Qthena‘s value:
“ipQuants gives us an advantage over other firms.”
The advantage comes from previously unavailable access to EPO data that is now helping firms and in-house counsel become more impactful, practice IP law more effectively and efficiently, increase job satisfaction among staff, and replace gut-feel with data-enabled assuredness. Here’s how our customers described worklife with ipQuants.
Becoming a Better IP Law Firm
Data analysis that improves strategy and tactics has been common for decades in many other business fields and domains. Although patent analytics have existed for decades, legal data to support decision-making in many other areas of IP law practice has been scarce. This is a hole we worked to fill by developing Qthena based on our experience as IP attorneys and software experts. Launched in 2021, it’s already clearly having an important effect on how firms operate and the decisions they make, from identifying potential business development targets and pursuing them, to improving overall strategy and day-to-day activities.
“The three main benefits of using ipQuants are better productivity, particularly in opposition and business development work, higher visibility in terms of competition, and a better top-down or eagle view of our overall business. The quality of the data gives us perspective. Where are we and how are we doing? Are we down? Is anything in our way? It’s really great to have a long-distance view to see yourself exactly how you are doing.”
Klaus Göken
Partner
Eisenführ Speiser
“Qthena makes access to information, which is crucial in patents, very easy.”
Dr. Eva Willnegger
Founder
Montgomery IP
“You just can’t get the insights provided by Qthena any other way. We use them to help our clients make better decisions, and provide better advice about advancing their IP programs, both strategically and tactically, which they really appreciate. Understanding the likelihood of a grant based on category risk factors will help them make more informed decisions.”
Dr. Thomas Gibb
Head of Professional Practice, Patent Group
Murgitroyd & Company Ltd.
“I saw an opportunity to 1. deliver more value to our clients by basing decisions on data and patterns rather than gut feel, and 2. greatly improve many of our internal processes such as competitive analysis and business development. Part of my recommendation to integrate ipQuants was also me saying ‘I know some of our competitors are using this and we can’t get left behind.’”
Dr. Paul Loustalan
Partner
Reddie & Grose LLP
Becoming a Better Patent Attorney
Qthena delivers value across the entire prosecution, opposition and appeals spectrum of work, enabling attorneys to look at the prior art, OCR the text to instantly find documents and feature mentions, then compare their discoveries to the claims. As you’ll see below, Qthena improves how patent attorneys prepare, argue and support their interpretations.
“ipQuants is a tool that attorneys need to improve their service.”
Senior VP of IP Management
Global healthcare company
Germany
“ipQuants software allows you to look at the European prosecution of an application or set of applications—stats and insight on any particular patent class, or applicant or representative—in a way that’s impossible without it. It’s incredibly useful for patent preparation, prosecution, oppositions and FTO.”
Dr. Paul Loustalan
“Qthena improves how I argue and support our interpretations. I love having all the documents linked with everything instantly available rather than having to flick through paper or open ten or more big PDFs. You can mark things up and search through them much faster than doing it the way we used to. If I know we’re going to be having an argument about a specific paragraph, I can highlight it and add notes with everything cross-referenced. It’s seamless.”
Dr. Thomas Gibb
Creating Happier Staff
Anyone who’s worked as a paralegal or junior attorney is familiar with some of the more repetitive or tedious parts of their workdays and the need to become friendly with the office printer. With Qthena able to quickly and digitally surface data needed to answer a wide variety of research questions, staff spend much less time searching and a lot more time finding. With a simple user interface, staff no longer have to struggle with IT systems or printer cartridges. Efficiency can reign.
“It’s definitely helping our staff complete more work and be a lot happier because they can now find documents and information so much faster.”
Dr. Paul Loustalan
“Pulling all the information together in patents is very discouraging because you will have several documents stored in different locations. It is much more fun to do this in Qthena.”
Dr. Eva Willnegger
Leveling Up the IP Profession
Before there was data, there was the gut and the hunch. The availability of EPO patent examiner data through Qthena changes how attorneys evaluate options and provide counsel to their clients. Where they previously opted for the best-guess as their best recommendation, they can now share data-driven counsel with their clients.
“The data helps us not only gain perspective, it quite frankly helps level up the professionalism of the practice of IP law. Without data supporting our advice, IP attorneys cannot be taken seriously.This is probably ipQuants’ greatest benefit to our profession.”
Klaus Göken
“It’s great, for example, when we get summoned to oral proceedings and I have data on the grant rates of a particular examiner. If it’s very low, I might advise the client to give up on the case or go to appeal where we could have a much better chance of success. You can’t confidently do this on a gut feel but you can do it when you’ve got data from ipQuants backing you up.”
Dr. Paul Loustalan
These are just a few ways that we’re helping the IP industry raise the bar with data. We look forward to continuing to develop the Qthena platform and expand its functionality. If you’re interested in reading the complete case studies, you can download them at the following links:
- Eisenführ Speiser Case Study. Open.
- Reddie & Grose LLP Case Study. Open.
- Montgomery IP Case Study. Open.
- Murgitroyd Case Case Study. Open.
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