Anaqua, the global provider of innovation and intellectual property management solutions, today announced AQX, a leading-edge software platform that enables corporations to align their IP portfolio strategy with their business objectives and provides law firms powerful new automation and business development tools. Built on modern, fast technologies in conjunction with Anaqua’s clients, the new software offers many benefits including a simplified user interface, data-rich analytics and business intelligence tools, and end-to-end financial management capabilities.

With AQX, users can leverage unique analytics and collaboration capabilities to develop IP assets that directly support their business objectives. The integration of public and private data analytics enables IP executives to easily track their organizations’ level of innovation, evaluate the strength of their portfolio, monitor the competitive landscape, and identify opportunities to leverage their IP to transform the business. Organizations can also measure and manage financial performance through the product’s Financial Management system, which provides IP matter management, budgeting, cost tracking, accruals, invoicing, and e-billing tools to optimize legal spend. The AQX platform allows law firms to mitigate risk, reduce cost and drive growth through unique analytics and differentiated offering. 

“Intellectual Property management has become a business function,” said Vincent Brault, Senior Vice President of Product and Innovation at Anaqua. “Anaqua clients believe that IP is the business and they align their IP organization to power innovation, Freedom to Operate and brand protection. With AQX, we are addressing the unmet needs of IP and business executives by providing a software platform that gives corporations a competitive edge and helps law firms differentiate themselves and achieve business success.”  

Commenting on the AQX platform, Eyal Iffergan, President of leading industry analysts Hyperion Research, said: "Corporate IP Operations are in the midst of transformative change characterized by both organic and material integration with the business units IP ops serves. With the release of AQX, Anaqua is seeding the heart of the IP Business Management ecosystem with a juggernaut of capabilities specifically designed to catalyze transformation and support core business strategies.”

Bob Romeo, CEO of Anaqua, added: “AQX is not just another release, but a significant step to connecting the IP team to the rest of the business and allows each client to make the system their own. It is a next-generation platform that empowers organizations with the tools they need to best impact their business. In large part, due to collaborating with our clients, we are transforming IP into Business Success together.”  

Key Features of AQX include:

§ Financial Management – Manage how and where IP teams spend money across the business. Users can collect, analyze, and report costs for use in budgeting, accrual forecasting, and monitoring costs for spend optimization.

o Budgeting – Create and manage annual budgets based on the type of IP, region, division, etc. for managers and business units. Create budgets using a familiar spreadsheet format and track against the actual amount spent. This feature includes multiple levels of security to select editing or viewing permissions for different users.

o Accruals – Anticipate upcoming expenses on a monthly or quarterly basis. Compare accruals to actual spent for estimate accuracy. This capability is best for unknown and ongoing costs such as work performed for infringement cases.

o Improved Cost Tracking – Improved templates for anticipating costs based on tasks and events.

o Invoicing – Detailed information on bills received allowing users to make informed decisions, reviewing specific matters, line items, accruals, and payments per invoice.

§ Invoice Upload ­­– Improved UI with easy to use drag-and-drop invoice upload. Leverage custom invoice templates to pull specific data and configure business rules for accepting or rejecting invoices. Fully support LEDES 98B, 98BI, and XML 2.1

o E-Billing – Accept invoices and track payment of bills through integration with accounts payable systems.

§ Payment Tracking – Track payment submissions and currency type to an external AP system.

§ Currency – Track currency rate of invoice submission and at time of payment.

§ Authorization – Leverage authorization chain workflow allowing multiple individuals to review an invoice.

o Dashboard Reports – Visualize and report financial data for analysis.

§ Portfolio Insight – Integrate comprehensive internal business intelligence and KPIs with process automation and documents in a single efficient, intelligent environment for more informed decisions. Tighter integration with AcclaimIP delivers unique actionable intelligence to decision-makers and executives with 360° analytics and metrics in a smart platform.

§ New Home Page & UI/UX – Experience the ease of a modern, fast UX with simplified navigation and customized card concept home page.

§ Find – Quick search capability with new “Any Number” field, ability to search a specific subset of fields across modules and search tasks with module data.

§ Bulk Uploads – Efficiently load significantly higher volumes of Patent, Trademark, and Invoice records. Users can create custom template files or upload external files. Full error identification on single upload

§ Registry Updates – Significant performance improvements with support for Design Applications and ability to create Registry records in bulk from search results.

§ Private PAIR – Enhanced support for downloading Private PAIR documents based upon the USPTO’s updated secure access methodology.

§ Financial System Integration – Two-way integration allowing AQX to create matters in a finance system while also supporting data flow from a finance system into AQX. SimpleLegal, a modern legal operations system, is the first integration supported on the AQX platform.

• Enhanced Innovation Portal (Beta) – Simplify the invention submission process enabling inventors to submit ideas more easily. Powered by ideaPoint, Anaqua inventors can now begin to create an AQX invention record in a configurable streamlined UI.