Utilising Legal Technology for Your IP Management

As a law firm in Singapore active in the area of intellectual property (“IP”), you will inevitably be confronted with one question: “how can we effectively and efficiently manage our clients’ IP portfolio?” While it seems obvious that embracing technology is a key part of boosting your business capability and remaining competitive, it is often challenging to modernize structures and processes which have been in place for years or even decades. This is where experienced IP service providers come into play, who make use of their longstanding experience and expertise in this area to support local firms in bringing their IP processes to the next level.

Naturally, one of the key steps of increasing productivity in relation to your IP management is to make sure that your underlying software infrastructure is as advanced and reliable as possible. Technological innovations in the software solutions area include web-enabled intellectual asset management systems which combine the most valuable features of both a client-server solution and a web-based application.

Every law firm is different, not just in terms of their culture and staff, but also in terms of how they structure their work and client relationships. This is why the software needs to be highly configurable, user friendly and very compatible with existing IT infrastructures. When implementing a new software, your software provider’s IT and IP experts should conduct an implementation study together with the end-users to analyse their processes and requirements and come up with a solution which would meet their needs. Ideally, the various modules – trademarks, patents, designs, and further matters – can be deployed separately or as an all-encompassing package, to allow the most comprehensive intellectual asset management, from the initial idea over application and foreign filings to maintenance actions and licensing.

As with all software nowadays, user-friendliness is key. A well-structured and easy-to-use interface shortens the learning curve and reduces the training time for paralegals and other users of the system, saving you time and costs and eventually leading to a better data quality. Tools like wizards, assisted record creation and clearly identified required fields further support this cause.

Singapore is a melting pot and local law firms are often involved with clients and cases stretching far beyond the borders of this little red dot. Hence, your software should be able to support multiple languages and characters (for example Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic and Arabic), taking into account your multinational workforce and projects covering different parts of the world. A complete Unicode support and multilingual interface make sure that law firms are well prepared for this challenging working environment.

As projects and processes become more globalized, work habits and workspace arrangements are changing as well. Employers increasingly offer flexible working options such as working from home. In addition, a lot of work is done remotely during business trips when visiting clients or conferences.

Another aspect you should focus on when choosing your IP software, is a robust and flexible search engine to ensure your team always gets the information they need. Since every database is only as good as the data being typed in, advanced software solutions offer you special functionalities to eliminate duplicates and routine work and this would help channel your resources in more productive areas.

With the increasing amount of e-mails and attachments we receive every day, the usage of a sophisticated document management system becomes more and more important. At best, e-mails and documents related to your IP rights and matters can be easily archived via drag and drop or are automatically assigned to the corresponding asset via the subject line content of an e-mail. Law firms are encouraged to make use of such systems guaranteeing a secure and instant connection to everyone who needs access, from an in-house docket clerk to your most precious contacts – your clients. Needless to say, the law firm should always have control of record and field level accessibility rights for all parties involved.

A modern IP management solution can even help to make collaboration more than just one of the buzzwords these days. All too often, the process of instructing your network of IP law firms around the world to perform a foreign filing on behalf of your client is either a half-manual exercise, or leads to duplicate data entry. Intelligent workflows together with the opportunity to upload files directly into your document management system can save both time and resources in this regard.

Jens is the Managing Director of Dennemeyer in Southeast Asia, based at the regional headquarter in Singapore. Together with Dennemeyer’s specialists around the world, he is supporting local law firms with their global IP management. Prior to his current role, he has been working for the Singaporean-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, helping Singaporean companies venture into the German market, and vice versa.

Dennemeyer Group, originally founded as a patent law firm in Luxembourg, has been setting benchmarks for all services and software solutions in the IP sector for over 50 years. Today, with 23 offices in 16 countries, the group manages nearly three million property rights of more than 3,000 clients, and is the largest global full-service provider in the IP industry.