The problem gets even worse if you are trying to review every single case for payment based on notifications in document form without all the case data to hand. Automated services often rely on system calculated due dates and have no tools to help you review the quality of data.
Even worse, these services lack a way to address the issue of bad data quality – it’s all summed up in the old saying “Garbage in - Garbage out!”. The problem is obvious, which is why Ipendo is dedicated to making your life easier through a service that meets all your needs.
Our new tool for handling Patent and Design Renewals – the “Maintenance Module” – has been designed to address all your key needs: SIMPLICITY, QUALITY, COST & FUNCTIONAL EFFICIENCY
Simplicity and Cost: Online Instructions and Default Pay
Our Maintenance Module has always been built around a default pay solution. This allows you to give online instructions to indicate that the case should be abandoned or handled through another channel. If you miss a review - fees are paid by default. We have now designed payment objects that contain more information than simple due dates – the amount, the currency and the current instruction for that particular payment.
The big news is that we now keep our platform open for giving “No Pay” instructions as long as the payment process on cases in the same batch are not initiated. This means that you can abandon cases, for a low extra fee, much later than competing services with default pay. So even if you are late it is still possible to reverse the default instruction online without the need to send emails or documents – the instructions are clearly visible in the platform.
By incorporating the Service as a module in your online management system there is one place to go to retrieve all the data you need to make decisions – the information is at your fingertips. The default pay model in combination with the total online solution allows for short lead times and help keep the total cost for handling annuities down. Beware other service providers who have a low initial service fee but charge far more for the whole operation and don’t keep your information where you need it.
Quality: Data Validation – Establish Case Fingerprint
To improve data quality we have also incorporated a Maintenance Data Validation Tool. We believe that a case is just like a person – it has a fingerprint containing all the data needed to identify the case, as well as the amount and due date of payments necessary to keep the case alive. Our updated Maintenance Module lets you know if Ipendo has received all the data required by the authorities in the particular jurisdiction for each case. We use statuses where it is easy to filter out which cases need to be completed. We understand that even if data is not perfect –you still want your patent and design rights kept alive. That’s why we let you know if we have initiated the payment process based on a “partial fingerprint” but that there is still information needed to secure that payment.
Some systems base their payments on due dates autocalculated by the same software where the data is stored. We believe it makes more business sense to have a separate process for this that starts the moment there is enough of the fingerprint available. This process adds extra value by checking external databases where this is available. We trim this process to ensure minimal lead time to meet the requirements of speedy case-takeovers – without ever compromising Quality!
Our new warning system even has different levels to let you know if there are any cases we cannot pay – or cases where data need to be reviewed.
Functional Efficiency: Clear Cut-off Dates
When attempting to pay cases with clear cut off dates through ‘partial fingerprints’ it is extremely important to know the status of the payment. To help simplify this we have introduced the terms “First Attempted Pay Date” and “Case Qualification Date”. The “First Attempted Pay Date” lets you know that we have received sufficient information to try to identify the case, together with its payments, and that we will execute any payments that we have identified.
When all the information that we have requested is available we also issue the “Case Qualification Date” to indicate that from this date we will ensure that we execute payment based on the supplied data.