INVENTION DISCLOSURE MANAGEMENT

“First-to-File” – It’s vital to your company to facilitate faster throughput of your invention processes!

The INNOVATOR Enterprise Software Solution provides the tools to better manage your invention disclosure process by facilitating faster throughput and accountability. An automatic IP-specific workflow process routes potential intellectual property to any number of various Intellectual Property Portfolio Managers, IP Attorneys, Patent Agents, and Reviewers—all while creating tasks and documenting where the IP is in the invention disclosure decision process, and identifying the next steps in the invention disclosure review, analysis and decision process.

A Sample Invention Disclosure Workflow Process

Customizable to your Process

The inventors are the drivers for your invention disclosure process. While inventing is critical to your organization’s long-term success, the process of creativity is something that can’t be forced. Give your inventors all of the tools they need to simplify the invention disclosure process and improve participation.

– Our Inventors Portal is designed to give inventors what they want, like a custom invention disclosure form, draft/private mode, duplicate invention searching, patent reward tracking, and easy progress monitoring of the status of their invention disclosures and pending patents.

The Patent Review Team is the heart of your Intellectual Property decision process. Their expertise and speed are what determines not only the volume, but also the quality of your invention pipeline. Making sure that submitted inventions are “reviewer ready” reduces wasted time chasing down inventors for additional invention information, details, and insures completeness of your invention disclosures.

– Our Invention Disclosure Management System provides your patent team a Patent Review Dashboard with the workflow solutions and tools to expertly analyze, review and prioritize incoming invention disclosures, guaranteeing a high-quality stream of intellectual property.

The IP Department is ultimately responsible for the management of your entire invention and intellectual property process. Do you have visibility into your current invention disclosure decision and analysis workflow?  How many inventions are in your patent review process?  How long is it taking for your invention disclosures to be reviewed?  What does your invention and intellectual property portfolio look like?

– The INNOVATOR Enterprise software system gives your IP Department the solutions and tools to access and manage the entire invention disclosure review and analysis process, as well as, provides advanced tools such as intellectual property portfolio and lifecycle management, IP family management, advanced IP reporting, trade secret protection, export control and many other intellectual property management and time saving features.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT – CRITICAL TO YOUR SUCCESS!

Learn more about some of the time-saving benefits of INNOVATOR Enterprise, like improving your patent review throughput by as much as 67%!

THE INVENTORS

The inventors are the drivers for your process. While inventing is critical to your organization’s long-term success, the process of creativity is something that can’t be forced. Give your inventors all of the tools they need to simplify the process and improve participation.

Our Inventors Portal is designed to give inventors what they want, like a draft/private mode, duplicate searching, reward tracking, and easy progress monitoring.

Key Features for Inventors include:

• Invention Disclosure Forms customized and standardized to your business enable your inventors to provide consistent submissions.

• Auto alerts insure all fields are completed before forwarding for review and witnessing.
• Draft or Private Save Options allow the inventor to save the invention disclosure to complete or forward at a later time.
• Forwarding disclosures for witnessing or manager review is fast and easy. Automatic forwarding can be based on a multitude of factors, such as, technology, department, location, etc…
• Collaborating with Co-Inventors is easy!  Each inventor entered on the invention disclosure has access to the invention disclosure to add and edit information in draft mode prior to submitting the disclosure for review.
• Advanced searching capabilities, duplicate checking, and the ability to link innovations together make life easier for the inventor.
• The Inventors Portal allows inventors to conveniently manage and track their inventions.  The portal makes it easy for the inventor to track the progress of each disclosure through the entire patent review and patent application process.

• Tasks are easily managed on the Inventors Portal.  Reviewers may have questions or need additional information from the inventor.  The reviewer can simply assign a task and due date requesting the information.  The task will appear on the “My Tasks” section of the Inventor’s Portal.
• Inventor Awards are easily tracked on the Inventors Portal.

THE PATENT REVIEW TEAM

The Patent Review Team is the heart of your IP decision process. Their expertise and speed are what determines not only the volume, but also the quality of your invention pipeline. Making sure that submitted inventions are “reviewer ready” reduces wasted time chasing down inventors for additional invention information, details, and insures completeness.

Our solution also provides your patent team with the analytic engine and tools to expertly review and prioritize incoming inventions, guaranteeing a high-quality stream of intellectual property.

Key Features for Patent Review include:

• The INNOVATOR Enterprise is fully customizable to accommodate your invention disclosure workflows, processes, forms and analysis procedures.
• Using our flexible business process workflow engine, nearly any patent review process can be configured, whether it is hierarchical, linear or a combination.  Rules that determine how and when disclosures are moved between various review committees can be manual or automatic and help speed the process.
• Based on your business rules the system can automatically prioritize inventions to speed the review process for those inventions that will provide the highest return on investment.   Due dates can be automatically or manually assigned to expedite the review process for high priority disclosures.
• Invention Disclosure forms arrive complete, saving time and money.  The system’s auto alert feature insures all fields are completed by the inventor before forwarding to the review committee.
• The Patent Review Committee Dashboard contains the latest information regarding tasks, comments, analysis results, scoring and related attachments all facilitating a streamlined review process.
• Collaboration and communication is easy.  Collaboration between inventors, review committee members, IP Department, outside counsel, and other groups, all controlled with the highest level of security, creates a dynamic and interactive environment for your Intellectual property.
• Tasks to be assigned to inventors, review committees and others in your organization are managed from the dashboard.
• Tasks are created either manually or automatically based on a pre-determined workflow.

Patent Review Committee Analysis, Review and Decision Process Workflows – Read below for details:

THE IP DEPARTMENT

The IP Department is ultimately responsible for the entire invention process. Do you have visibility into your current workflow? How many inventions are in process? How long is it taking to be reviewed? What does your portfolio look like?

Our Intellectual Property Portal gives you access into the entire process and provides advanced tools such as family management, advanced reporting, IP management, and dashboard statistics.

Key Features for the IP Department include:

• The INNOVATOR Enterprise provides your IP Department with visibility into the entire Invention Disclosure process.
• The INNOVATOR Enterprise provides all the information the IP Department needs to efficiently and effectively manage the company’s Invention Disclosure review and decision process, as well as, manage and safeguard all of your intellectual property.
• Collaboration and communication is easy with INNOVATOR Enterprise .  Collaboration between internal employees, external contributors, outside counsel, and other groups, all controlled with the highest level of security, creates a dynamic and interactive environment for your Intellectual property.
• IP management is advanced by allowing “family” relationships between inventions, patents, agreements, NDA’s, and ideas.
• The INNOVATOR Enterprise tracks every change made to the invention disclosure to provide an accurate audit trail for management.
• The Snapshot feature takes a “snapshot” or unalterable time-stamped picture of the invention disclosure or other IP at any point in time to make a permanent record of the document. Snapshots can be automatic based on pre-programmed events or taken manually.
• Understanding what is in your IP portfolio is important.  Advanced reporting and portfolio management reports deliver the information you need when you need it.

REPORTING

What will you tell your board and shareholders when they ask you to list your company’s core proprietary assets, their location and who’s working on them?

It’s equally important that you have quick access to the status, progress and results of your invention and patent application pipeline. 

The INNOVATOR Enterprise offers many reports to provide information on a range of areas, such as user participation and the health of your innovation and invention process.

• One of INNOVATOR Enterprise’s most valued reports is the Pipeline Report. The Pipeline Report breaks down the status distribution of innovations that are active in the review process, and filters allow you to quickly identify bottlenecks in the innovation process, allowing you to quickly identify where innovations are being delayed within your review process.
• The Review Committee Report identifies decision processing time within each Review Committee, how committees vote, and how individual Review Committee Members Vote.
• Challenge Results: Did your Timed-Challenge achieve your goals?  This report provides the total number of submissions, participating users, participation rate, ROI details and more.
• Real-Time Monitor: Is participation and activity where you want it to be? Get statistics by week, month, last 30-60-90 days and yearly.  View log-ins, ideas, comments, current logged-in users and more.
• Innovation Throughput: Are your inventions getting processed fast enough?  Review total inventions submitted, inventions at each stage and average days at each stage.
• Metrics Summary: Need a quick look at your program’s statistics--get a quick overview of your innovation program’s activity and benefit details.
• User Statistics: Are you interested in the activity of particular users?  Review the log-ins, submissions and statistics of each individual users activities.
• Completed Projects: What is the quantity and value of your completed projects? Drill down by category, division and location for the results of completed projects.
• Make your own Report:  Need a report that we don’t offer?  Create and save your own portfolio of reports for easy access at any time with the INNOVATOR Enterprise Custom Report Designer.

 Many other Standard reports….

Discover how your business can supercharge your invention and intellectual property processes

The information above covers only a portion of the many ways MindMatters Solutions can help you supercharge and facilitate faster throughput and visibility of your invention and patent review processes while safeguarding your intellectual property and trade secrets. The best way to gain a complete understanding of how INNOVATOR Enterprise and the experts at MindMatters Solutions can help your business is to contact us to begin a discussion of your invention and intellectual property needs and requirements.