Tactility’s prototype is currently configured as a case management system (CMS) for a patent grant process. Tactility supports many processes in an end-to-end patent grant process and aspires to "close-the-loop" and support "structured communication", which holds potential to dramatically improve overall quality, productivity, and timeliness.

Preparation

The National Science Foundation provided us multiple grants to reduce barriers to registering intellectual property. Our earlier solution, TeamPatent, facilitates applicants' interactions with patent attorneys and improves attorney preparation quality, timeliness, and productivity. TeamPatent provides validation warnings for inconsistent terminology, invalid figure/claim/callout references, antecedent basis issues, etc. These capabilities can be ported to Tactility.

I have been using TeamPatent since 2013 and it has helped me greatly to speed up the patent drafting process. Its keyword recognition and reference tracking functions, as well as its simple callout adding feature through the figure editor, make it a suitable tool to draft patents while keeping a standard terminology and reference numerals.  Moreover, its real-time editing function enables a splendid peer reviewing. I plan to keep using it and definitely recommend it to anyone working in the patent drafting field. - Javier Peñalba

Initial Filing

Users upload DOCX or PDF and see a fixed-layout view in one panel and an editable, reflow-layout view of the converted Red Book or ST.36 XML in an aligned, adjacent panel. The EPO taught us that if the reflow view displays the converted XML application body, some applicants would feel compelled to compare the PDF and reflow line-by-line, which they are unwilling to do. In order to promote applicant adoption, Tactility condenses the reflow view to a series of snippets, each containing a validation warning. The validation warnings could include conversion report issues such as those emitted by USPTO's DOCX importer and WIPO’s ePCT application body converter as well as the TeamPatent's fine-grain validation warnings. When the applicant has completed validation, Tactility generates a filing receipt the applicant can download consisting of the originally-submitted DOC/X or PDF with changes indicated using track changes or comments, respectively.

Subsequent Filing

Tactility supports structured amendments according to a document replacement method described in WIPO's PCT Paragraph Replacement proposal. Applicants can accept changes in a DOCX filing receipt, make amendments, upload a new version, and the system automatically generates a new, marked-up (track changes) version. Annotations in a given version propagate to other versions (and formats). This allows examiners to ask, for instance, in which version a given claim passage was introduced. Tactility is currently extending support to include all methods specified in USPTO MPEP 714, permitting amending…

  • Specification (inc. abstract) by
    • paragraph replacement
    • section replacement
    • document replacement (substitute specification)
  • Claims by marked up document replacement
  • Drawings by replacement sheets

Data Capture

Offices typically normalize even DOC/X and structured PDFs to TIFF page images and engage data capture vendors to perform OCR, touch-up (e.g. correct misrecognized characters), and syntactic tagging (e.g. identify headings, which lines are part of a given paragraph, etc.). In addition to costs and delays, this has led the USPTO and the EPO to a dual-data pipeline separately processing image page data and XML content, with no ability to move examiner work product from one format to the other. For example, if an examiner annotates an application fixed-layout format, the annotation is unavailable in the reflow-layout format, and vice versa.

Tactility can be used in conjunction with a OCR engine to provide touch-up. Tactility imports recognition data, emphasizes suspicious items (words with low recognition confidence), and requests users approve or correct low confidence items. This integrates capture into an electronic dossier system, allowing "progressive" touch-up— the system can provide machine capture (e.g. automatic OCR and tagging) before examination and later facilitate manual touch-up before publication, all while maintaining alignment of the examiners' work.

Examination and Structured Communication

Tactility’s team built examination prototypes for the USPTO and the EPO. These provided extensive claim management, links between part references and callouts, office action drafting assistance, etc. However, these capabilities relied on fully-structured application data, which wasn't always present and reliable. Patent offices must accommodate legacy formats (e.g. PDF) and amendments thereof so Tactility now offers technologies which allow examiners to seamlessly use less- and more-structured format, review OCR and AI preliminary determinations, apply feedback, and incrementally increase document structure.

Structured Communication retains content and annotation structure as documents are exchanged between stakeholders in complex, document-centric processes. For example, patent part references and callouts identified by an applicant remain available to an examiner. Conversely, examiner office action (OA) arguments, application quotations, case law citations, and prior art references/quotations remain available to the applicant. Persistent structure allows the development of higher-level automation, allowing stakeholders, for example, to respond to each argument with appropriate counterarguments linked to proposed amendments, while automating track changes between versions and ensuring all issues are addressed at each exchange.