“Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.”– Henry Ford
This is certainly true when it comes to InQuartik’s patent management and analytics online workspace Patent Vault. In fact, Patent Vault’s features enable just the kind of collaboration that Ford was speaking of.
“Coming together is a beginning.”
If team members cannot work together on the same platform, then effective collaboration will be difficult, if not impossible. So, all effective collaboration must begin with being able to bring the right players together.
A Low Entry-Barrier to Collaboration…
With this in mind, Patent Vault has made it extremely easy to invite others to join this online workspace. With a quick email, new team members can be invited to join a project. All they will need to do is to register for a free Patentcloud account and log in.
Once in, invited users can fully access a project and share folders with other team members directly (if granted editing rights). This is in sharp contrast to other products that require team members to email files or dashboards to one another to share information.
…And Safe Collaboration for Authorized Users
While it is easy to invite others to join Patent Vault, only users who are invited and authorized by the project manager can join a project. This ensures that only authorized users have access. Simply put, you can invite anyone to join a project, but you can also make sure that not everyone has access to it.
“Keeping together is progress.”
Once a team has been brought together, keeping them working together smoothly is important. This means that team members must be able to communicate openly and effectively, and project managers must be able to keep an eye on the progress of a project, especially if Patent Lifecycle Management (PLCM) methodology has been adopted.
Notifications and Monitoring
With Patent Vault, team members and the project manager can stay up to date on all the latest changes and developments in a project, including the actions in the project itself. For example, if someone creates a chart or simply opens a file, a notification can be sent to the project manager and/or the other team members. This is also true if someone amends or replies to a Memo (more on that later), or adds or deletes some patents.
For convenience and increased communication, these notifications can be set up and modified by the project manager and/or team members.
What’s more, Patent Vault has built-in several monitoring mechanisms and notification systems that are available to the whole team. These include query status and legal status alerts, among many others. All of this activity can be viewed and monitored in the Project History, and managers or users can sign up for daily Project History notifications.
“Working together is success.”
Success comes when people can work together, and to do so, they must be able to share their ideas and opinions with one another.
Memos and Discussions
Patent Vault has made it easy for users to comment on patents with its Memo feature. With this feature, users can add a Memo to open a discussion for specific clauses or phrases in the claims or even the figures in a patent. Other members can then reply or confirm the original commenter’s findings. This means that several different discussions can be held simultaneously.
For example, if there are some matters associated with certain claim terms or if something happens involving a specification or specific drawing, the Memo feature enables these developments to be noted and shared with others. What’s more, Memos can also be left on analytical charts, such as the advanced patent matrix chart, which can be especially useful if the person who created the chart wants to convey additional information or make an important notation.
For those who are responsible for managing the lifecycles of their patent portfolios or working with a team to analyze patent portfolios, anything that happens anywhere, at any time, is important!
Take a look at what Patent Vault can do for you and your team, or contact your Client Success Specialist now!
Originally published on October 8, 2019
