Patent Attorney Office CRM
In patent and trademark attorney work the whole job rests on dates: the opposition period, the renewal date, the annual fee payment. When a date is missed what appears is not a delay but the loss of the client's right, and there is no way back from that.
Renewal, opposition and annual fee dates are separate fields on the file; the task tied to each date is opened for the person responsible before it expires and stays listed until closed.
- Keep every trademark and patent file under the client account with its application number, country and class
- Enter the renewal, opposition and annual fee dates as fields; let a reminder task be opened before the deadline
- Build up the notification sent to the client and the instruction received under the file, and see files waiting for instructions on a separate list
- Show the official fee and the attorney fee as separate items on the quote and follow collection file by file
| File Record | A trademark or patent application is a record with fields for the number, the country and the class, attached to the client account. The portfolio is the list of files under that account. |
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| Deadline Fields and Reminders | The renewal, opposition and annual fee dates are separate fields on the file; the task attached to each field is opened before the date, assigned to the person responsible, and stays on the list until it is closed. |
| Notification and Instruction History | Information sent to the client and the answer that comes back are recorded as activities under the file; files waiting for instructions are a filter on that status. |
| Official Fee and Attorney Fee | The official fee and the service charge are separate line items on the quote; the collection status file by file is read from those lines. |
In an attorney's office hundreds of files are open at the same time and each file has its own calendar. When the deadlines are scattered across a diary, a spreadsheet and a person's memory, the system becomes dependent on one person's attention; when that person goes on leave or leaves the firm, nobody can work out from scratch which file is waiting for what and on which date. What is more, some of those dates wait for instructions from the client: the notification has reached the office and has been passed on to the client, but because no answer comes back the file quietly approaches its deadline.
In Rapitek CRM a file is a record with fields for the application number, the country and the dates. The renewal, opposition and fee dates sit in separate fields and each one has its own reminder task attached; the task stays on the list until it is closed. What was notified to the client and when builds up under the same record, and files waiting for instructions appear as a separate list. When the person looking after a file changes, what is handed over is not a folder but the record itself, with its history.
The scope of the plans and the separately priced items are written on the pricing page.
