Unified Patents and the Linux Foundation Announce Patcepta

Original article from THE LINUX FOUNDATION | 30 NOVEMBER 2022

Patcepta is a new open source rules engine for improving patent prosecution and management through automation.  Any interested party can join to help foster a new generation of IP management practices using open source software.

Unified Patents decided to work with The Linux Foundation in making the Patcepta project open source to remove critical barriers to entry that attorneys and entrepreneurs face in managing their patent portfolio. This project is the first of its kind in that it provides an open, understandable, and auditable ruleset and toolkit for enabling more efficient and innovative processes and tools for managing IP portfolios.

“We are excited to see this fundamental capability become an open source project for collaboration and shared dependency'' said Mike Dolan, Senior Vice President of Projects at the Linux Foundation. “Jurisdiction rules and a common rules engine are shared challenges faced by in-house and outside counsel trying to manage patent portfolios - a perfect opportunity to develop collaboratively and maintain in an open source community.”

“A key barrier to entry was made very clear in the beginning around docketing rules, which just in the US are over 500, while only about 80 represent almost 80% of the ones used,” said Shawn Ambwani, Co-Founder and COO of Unified Patents. “The number of rules is one of the reasons why the market is so fragmented and why the software is mainly provided as a loss leader to lock in services contracts for paying patent annuities. Another issue IP managers face is concerns associated with bad rules or missing a deadline – now the rules data and code will be transparent and open for any IP manager to see or update.  Finally, integrating such docketing software into larger processes and accounting systems makes switching costs high.  

Software providers, law firms, and even some corporations develop their code and maintain it as the rules change, which can be expensive and repetitive. 

After talking to The Linux Foundation (TLF) and a few members to gauge interest, we decided a potential course would be to help make the rules / code open source so anyone can build on top of it. In addition, having open source allows for collaboration and updates and, most importantly, allows everyone to see the code to get confidence that it is safe to rely upon.

Ultimately, the goal is to foster better and more innovative patent management processes by eliminating a major barrier.  

Patcepta is now an official project hosted by the Linux Foundation. You can view the project here or go to www.patcepta.org. It is the first legal industry codebase, open rules data, and project ever hosted by the foundation. We hope it will not only complete publishing all the United States rules and code, but there are opportunities for the open source community to add international jurisdictions and perhaps an interface down the road.”

We hope all parties interested in making patent and IP management easier evaluate and contribute to this project and help remove docketing rules as a barrier to managing their portfolio.

An initial kickoff meeting is scheduled for February 9th, 10a PT, so participants can join and help in moving this project forward or getting access to the repository. Please contact info@patcepta.org for any questions.