Alt Legal vs Corsearch: how they compare in 2026
Alt Legal and Corsearch serve trademark practice from opposite ends of it, one a docketing platform priced by matter and one a clearance and brand protection incumbent with analyst services attached. Alt Legal sits in the top two bands on seven of fifteen axes, Corsearch on four, and the gap is what each publishes about itself rather than what each does. Alt Legal publishes four price tiers against a stated unit of docketed matters, states in its own terms that it does not act as a law firm or as a substitute for a lawyer's advice, and describes exactly what leaves its infrastructure when the AI assistant runs, being the query, the system instructions and structured filtering data, with customer records staying inside its environment and logged data never used to train. Corsearch answers on scale. It states coverage across 190 registries and more than 1,100 screening databases, separates phonetic, semantic and visual similarity as analytical dimensions, and sells oversight as a choice between automated and expert watch.
At a glance
All 15 axes, side by side
The same grid applied to every vendor in the index, graded from public sources. Hover a grade to see what the letter means on that axis.
AI Centrality
How much of the product is actually AI. Whether the machine learning is the mechanism the buyer is paying for or a feature layered onto conventional software, and whether the vendor is specific about which is which.
One shipped feature uses machine learning: the AI Filtering Assistant, a natural-language query tool that populates report filters from a typed request such as patent filings in the EU from the last 90 days. Everything else the vendor labels intelligent turns out on inspection not to be. The Goods and Services Composer is described as an intelligent drafting tool but its published mechanism is search and reuse over the USPTO ID Manual and two million registered marks, with snippet libraries, deduplication and fee calculation, and no model is claimed for it. Automated docketing, the core of the product, is rules-driven date calculation against official IP office data. Alt Legal states plainly on the AI page that it does not train or host its own AI models, and the docketing platform's value stands entirely without the assistant.
A long established trademark search and services business with a substantial AI layer built onto it. Corsearch predates generative AI by decades and its underlying assets are a data operation across 190 registries and more than 1,100 screening databases plus a professional analyst workforce, both of which function without models. TrademarkNow was relaunched in May 2024 with advanced AI, which dates the model layer as an addition rather than a foundation. The AI is nonetheless real and technically specific: phonetic, semantic and visual similarity analysis, an image recognition engine for logo and industrial design search, AI name generation, risk scoring, and an AI that blocks non compliant marketplace listings before publication. Remove the models and Corsearch remains a working trademark search and brand protection business staffed by analysts. Same placement as PatSnap and Lexis+ AI, and for the same reason: a mature platform hosts the model layer rather than depending on it.
Citation Accuracy and Hallucination Disclosure
Whether the vendor publishes measured accuracy on citations and assertions, grounds output to primary sources, and says plainly what its system does when it does not know. Legal has a documented public record of fabricated citations reaching filed briefs, so an untested claim of accuracy is not evidence.
Accuracy is claimed and never measured. The Composer page promises improved ID Manual compliance and accuracy, and the AI page says operational data including queries and AI responses is logged to monitor quality and reliability, but no accuracy figure, test set, error rate or failure mode is published on any surface read on 31 August 2026. Two limbs of this axis do not bite: the product retrieves no primary law and generates no citations to authority, so there is nothing to ground or to check for subsequent history. The failure mode that does apply is a misconstrued filter returning an incomplete docket report, and against that the design helps more than the disclosure does, because the assistant populates visible filters in the report the user is already in rather than returning an opaque answer.
Similarity methodology is named at a technical level and nothing measured is published. The vendor states that matching evaluates phonetic, semantic and visual similarity, and that industrial design search uses sophisticated similarity algorithms, which describes the basis of a match rather than asserting accuracy generically. Risk scoring surfaces a graded result rather than a binary answer. What is absent: no precision or recall figure for similarity matching, no false negative rate on clearance search, no evaluation, no benchmark and no test corpus. The gap is consequential in a way specific to this category, because the failure mode in clearance is a miss rather than a fabrication: a confusingly similar mark that the search does not return produces a clearance opinion that is wrong and looks complete. One published phrase is noted and not credited, that automated watch delivers efficient monitoring without sacrificing accuracy, which is an unfalsifiable comparative with no figure attached. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the screening, clearance and watch pages, the TrademarkNow page and the press material on 29 Aug 2026.
Autonomy and Oversight Model
What the system decides on its own, what a lawyer must approve, and whether the vendor documents where the review point sits. A tool that drafts under review and a tool that files without one are different products and different risks.
The AI feature is user-invoked and non-agentic: it runs when someone types a query and it changes filters rather than acting on a matter. There is one real published control, and it is an administrative one, with the AI page stating that the assistant can be enabled or disabled according to a customer's IT and security preferences. What is missing is any statement of what a user should check before relying on the output, or any described review point. The nearest thing is a term in the customer agreement placing responsibility for reviewing the accuracy of all output on the customer and its authorised users, which allocates the duty without describing a mechanism for discharging it.
The oversight model is a purchasable product tier, which makes it inspectable and is the clearest such structure in this category. Watch is offered in two named configurations: Automated Watch using AI for efficient monitoring across expanding portfolios, and Expert Watch providing bespoke strategies and focused insight for more complex, high value matters. A customer chooses the level of human involvement according to the stakes of the matter, and the vendor states the trade off openly rather than implying that automation is always sufficient. The same structure runs through Brand Protection, described as combining AI detection with deep IP expertise and a team of experts. Held at B because the mechanics are not published: no statement of what triggers escalation from automated to expert review within a service, no description of what an Expert Watch analyst checks or against what standard, no confidence threshold on AI generated notices, and no account of what the pre publication listing blocker does unattended when it wrongly flags a legitimate listing.
Operational and Outcome Evidence
Named, dated evidence that the product works in production at real firms or legal departments. Case studies with figures and identified customers count. Unattributed testimonials and launch announcements do not.
The customer evidence is real, attributed and detailed, and it contains no measurement of change. The Nolte Lackenbach Siegel study names the firm, its managing partner Renee Duff and its trademark paralegal Kim Hassiak, and describes a portfolio of nearly 7,000 active USPTO matters and nearly 6,000 international matters at a firm it identifies as a top ten US trademark filer, along with the merger and legacy-system failure that drove the migration and the specific features the team uses. Further named practitioners appear across the site with firms and titles, including Rosie Burbidge at gunnercooke and Hillary Schroeder at Name Game IP, against a portfolio claim of 2,000 law firms and legal departments. What no located study provides is a before and after figure: the numbers describe portfolio scale rather than what changed, no study carries a publication date, and none of the evidence is attributed to the AI feature.
Published original research and named executives, with customers quoted but not identified. The strongest element is research rather than testimonial: the vendor publishes trademark volume figures to the individual mark, reporting 83,613,385 active trademarks at the end of 2023 against a forecast of 100,720,928 by 2026, which is a falsifiable claim about the world derived from its own data holdings and is checkable against registry records by anyone who wishes to. Named executives appear with titles: Simon Baggs as Executive Chairman and Matteo Amerio as President of Brand and Content Protection. Customer voices are extensive and mostly anonymous, with one named individual, Andy S. Ehard, quoted without an organisation. Held at B rather than A because no customer organisation is named anywhere in located material, no case study with methodology exists, and every performance figure is an up to claim without baseline, sample or period, being 40 percent faster clearance, 50 to 70 percent reduced watch review time and 75 percent faster notice turnaround than unnamed other industry solutions.
Privilege and Confidentiality Posture
How client confidences are handled: attorney client privilege and work product treatment, segregation of one client matter from another, whether client data trains any model, and what the vendor commits to in writing rather than in marketing.
The disclosure for the AI feature is the most specific located in this pull. The AI page states that only the query, system instructions and structured filtering data are sent to the model, that customer records and portfolio data do not leave Alt Legal's controlled infrastructure, that the AI provider does not store prompts or responses, and that logged operational data is never used to train models. Behind that sits a contractual confidentiality regime: section 3.1 of the terms defines the customer's confidential information to include information pertaining to legal or business affairs, clients, and other non-public data. Three gaps keep it here. Privilege and work product are never addressed, and the separate Alt Legal Assist agreement states expressly that Alt Legal cannot opine on privilege. Nothing addresses segregation between matters or between users inside a firm. And the terms and privacy policy pages refuse automated access, so both were read only in the fragments recoverable through the search index.
Nothing located, and the omission is material for this product class rather than incidental. A trademark clearance search and the opinion built on it are classic attorney work product, and a clearance report showing that a risk was identified before adoption is exactly the document that becomes contested in later infringement litigation, where it bears on willfulness. Nothing published addresses attorney client privilege, work product, or the confidentiality of a search report at all beyond a statement that reports can be stored safely within the platform. The conflicts dimension is equally unaddressed: this vendor performs clearance for many brand owners across the same classes and markets, so a search run for one client concerns marks owned by others who may also be customers, and no published material describes what separates them. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the TrademarkNow page, the platform logins page and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
UPL and Professional Responsibility Posture
Whether the vendor is clear that it supplies a tool rather than legal advice, who its audience is, and how it addresses unauthorized practice of law, competence and supervision duties, and jurisdiction limits. ABA Formal Opinion 512 is the reference point.
The advice line is drawn in the agreement rather than in a footer. Section 2.3 of the terms states that Alt Legal does not act as a law firm or a lawyer and does not act as a substitute for the advice of a lawyer, and that nothing about the availability, operation or use of the platform is intended to create an attorney-client relationship. The Alt Legal Assist agreement repeats the point for the paralegal service, adding that Alt Legal cannot opine on privilege or confidentiality. That is a real position, stated twice, in the documents that bind. It stops short of the rest: nothing engages with ABA Formal Opinion 512 or any state bar guidance, nothing addresses a supervising lawyer's competence and supervision duties over either the software or the outsourced paralegals, and no jurisdiction limit is stated for a product sold into 180-plus IP offices.
Not located. The product generates trademark risk assessments and clearance results that in house counsel and outside advisors rely on to decide whether a brand can be adopted, and the vendor describes the TrademarkNow range as do it yourself tools, which means non lawyers in marketing and brand functions are an intended user population making risk decisions on generated output. Nothing published states that output is not legal advice, addresses when qualified counsel should be involved in a clearance decision, or engages any professional conduct framework. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the TrademarkNow page, the webinar and content library material and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
AI Governance and Bias Disclosure
Published governance over model behaviour: who owns it inside the vendor, what is tested before release, and what is disclosed about disparate output across matter types, parties, or populations.
Searched the home page, the AI Filtering Assistant page, the Goods and Services Composer page, the pricing page, the GDPR page, the Nolte case study and the blog index on 31 August 2026: no responsible AI statement, no governance framework, no named owner for AI decisions, no pre-release testing regime and nothing on bias or uneven output was located. The AI page's Security and AI Infrastructure section is substantial but it is about data handling and access control, which is a different subject and is credited on the stewardship and confidentiality rows rather than here. The vendor's own statement that it does not train or host models explains part of the absence, since it is not making model-level decisions, but it does not answer what is tested before a feature that reads across a firm's whole docket is released.
Nothing published about how the models are governed, evaluated or monitored. No AI policy, no model card, no bias or fairness testing, no evaluation methodology, no accuracy monitoring, no drift statement, no named governance body, no ISO 42001 and no EU AI Act positioning were located, the last being notable for a company with London operations and stated European presence. The vendor publishes substantial commentary on AI in brand protection, including a webinar examining the hype and reality of AI generated fakes, which engages AI as a subject affecting its customers rather than disclosing anything about its own systems. One capability makes the absence pointed: an AI that blocks non compliant listings before publication makes automated decisions affecting third party sellers who are not customers and have no visibility into the model, and nothing published addresses how those decisions are governed or appealed.
AI Safety and Data Stewardship
Retention, deletion, access control, and what happens to prompts and documents after they are processed. Whether the vendor states its subprocessors and its incident practice, or leaves the buyer to assume.
Most of the ground is covered and the artifacts are not published. The GDPR page states TLS 1.2 or greater in transit, encryption at rest described as SHA-256 with 2048-bit keys, backups at least daily, annual employee privacy training, completed data mapping and privacy impact assessments, and documented incident response procedures. It sets out a deletion route conditioned on processing being complete and retention obligations satisfied, and it acknowledges Alt Legal's role as a data processor for GDPR customers. For the AI feature specifically, access to logged queries and responses is stated to be restricted to authorised engineering and security personnel. The gaps are the ones this band names: no subprocessor list is published, being available only by emailing the team, no retention period is stated for anything, and no breach-notification commitment was located. The GDPR page was last modified in May 2022 and the privacy policy could not be fetched because the path refuses automated access.
No stewardship position located. Nothing states whether customer search queries, candidate brand names, portfolio data or uploaded logo images are used to train or improve models, no retention period is published, and no deletion right is described. The nearest statement is that the platform is secure so reports can be stored safely within it, which describes storage as a product feature rather than a stewardship commitment. The sensitivity here is commercial rather than personal and is acute: a search for an unlaunched brand name or an unpublished logo reveals a company's product strategy before announcement, and a competitor learning what names a rival is clearing would gain a real advantage. One published capability sharpens the question, being that insights are stated to continuously improve detection accuracy, which implies customer derived signal feeds model improvement without stating whose data or on what basis. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the screening page, the TrademarkNow page and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
AI Liability and Recourse
What the vendor stands behind contractually when its output is wrong. Indemnities, caps, carve outs, insurance, and whether any of it is published or only reachable through a negotiated agreement.
The agreement allocates the loss and offers no recourse. Section 5 caps Alt Legal's maximum liability at the aggregate fees paid in the six-month period before the claim arose, which is at least a specific and readable measure, and excludes special, indirect, incidental, punitive and consequential damages along with lost profits and attorneys' fees. The platform is supplied AS IS with warranties disclaimed, and the same section states that the customer and its authorised users are solely responsible for reviewing the accuracy of all information they input and any output the platform generates. Authorised users also waive rights of setoff and counterclaim other than compulsory ones. No indemnity running to the customer, no warranty on output and no insurance position was located in the recovered text, though the terms page refuses automated access and was read only in fragments, so the absence of an indemnity is not asserted as a finding.
No published position located. Nothing was found on liability for AI output, warranty, service levels or remedy. The exposure is directly commercial and quantifiable in this category: a clearance search that misses a confusingly similar prior mark leads to a brand launch that must later be abandoned or defended, with rebranding costs and infringement exposure following, and a published customer quote states that no oppositions have been filed against rights searched or cleared by Corsearch, which is an outcome claim rather than a commitment about what happens when one is. On the brand protection side, an AI blocking a legitimate listing before publication imposes a cost on a third party seller with no described recourse. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the brand protection pages, the platform logins page and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Practice Systems Integration Depth
How deeply the product reaches into the systems legal work already lives in: document management such as iManage and NetDocuments, Word and Outlook, contract lifecycle management, matter management, e-billing, and court filing systems.
Real connections exist and none is documented to a depth an implementer could use. The pricing page's feature list names TEAS integration for USPTO filing, calendar sync for deadlines, client and third-party docket access, intake forms and data for 180-plus IP offices, and the Nolte study describes a working link to Smartsheet that Alt Legal's support team helped build at no additional fee. What was not located on 31 August 2026 is an integrations directory, an API reference or any developer documentation, and no connection to a document management system such as iManage or NetDocuments was found. The 180-plus office connections are the product's data supply rather than integration into the systems a firm's other work lives in, and they are credited on coverage rather than here.
Nothing located. No trademark docketing system, IP management platform, portfolio management system or document management integration was named, and no API or export documentation was found. The gap is the same one that ran through this category for patent tools and it is equally material for trademark practice, since renewals, deadlines and portfolio records live in a docketing system and a clearance or watch result has to reach it. The vendor does describe results as visible across teams and reports as storable within the platform, which is internal collaboration rather than integration with a customer's existing estate. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the TrademarkNow page, the platform logins page and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Deployment Model and Data Residency
Where the software runs and where the data sits. Multi tenant cloud, single tenant, private deployment, on premises, and whether region of residence is a published option or an enterprise conversation.
Where processing happens is answered and how the software is tenanted is not. The AI page states that all AI processing takes place within a private US-based cloud environment and that customer records and portfolio data do not leave Alt Legal's controlled infrastructure, which is a more precise processing-location statement than most vendors in this pull publish. The privacy policy adds that personal data may be transferred to and stored outside the EEA, including in the United States, and the GDPR page identifies Alt Legal, Inc. as a Delaware corporation based in the United States. Against that, no tenancy model is described anywhere, no region options are offered, and no EU or UK hosting alternative is mentioned despite a London office and European customers. A buyer can learn the country and not the architecture.
Nothing located. No hosting provider is named, no region or data residency commitment is published, and no deployment options are described. The vendor operates internationally with London named in its press material and serves customers across global markets, and nothing states where search queries, candidate names or portfolio data are processed or stored. For a European customer clearing a brand name, the residency question engages data protection obligations and, more practically, the confidentiality of an unlaunched product name. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the TrademarkNow page, the press releases and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Security Certifications and Trust Center
Independent attestation a buyer can pull without a sales call: SOC 2, ISO 27001, penetration test summaries, a trust center with current reports and named scope rather than a badge image.
No independent security attestation was located. Checked the home page, the AI page, the pricing page, the GDPR page and the site footer on 31 August 2026, and ran a separate search for a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report in this vendor's name, which returned only generic explanatory material about the two standards and nothing naming Alt Legal. There is no trust portal, no badge, no named auditor and no report request route. The GDPR page does describe security practices in specific terms, including transport security, encryption, backup cadence and incident response procedures, but a description of controls by the vendor is not an attestation by anyone else, and this axis asks who audited them.
No certification, attestation or security documentation of any kind was located. Searches combining the vendor name with ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR certification and trust centre terms on 29 Aug 2026 returned only generic explainer articles about those standards and no Corsearch specific result. No trust centre, security page, named auditor, penetration testing partner or examination date was found, and the only security related statement located is that the platform is secure so reports can be stored safely within it, which names no standard and cannot be verified. Under the three tier test the artifact is absent rather than gated. Recorded as a documented absence across the surfaces and searches actually run rather than as a certainty, and it is the weakest security position in ip-and-patents: every category peer publishes at least one named certification and three publish a trust centre.
Model Supply Chain Disclosure
Which models sit underneath, whose they are, where they run, and whether the vendor commits to telling customers when that changes. A legal buyer inherits every dependency it cannot see.
The vendor describes the arrangement clearly and will not say whose model it is. The AI page states that Alt Legal uses a secure enterprise AI platform to power the assistant, that it does not train or host its own models, that processing happens in a private US-based cloud environment, and that the AI provider does not store prompts or responses and does not use customer data for training, advertising or profiling. Every one of those facts is about the relationship rather than the counterparty: no model, no model family, no vendor and no version is identified anywhere on the surfaces read on 31 August 2026, and no commitment to notify customers if the provider changes was located. A firm answering a client's question about which model sees its docket queries cannot answer it from published material.
Nothing located. No foundation model provider, model family or version is named, no distinction is drawn between proprietary and third party models, and no subprocessor list was found. The vendor describes award winning AI, image recognition engines and similarity algorithms, all of which characterise capability rather than provenance, and nothing states whether any external model processes customer queries, candidate brand names or uploaded images. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the TrademarkNow page, the brand protection pages, the webinar material and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Commercial Transparency
Whether a buyer can learn what this costs without entering a sales process: published rates, the unit being charged, what sits behind an enterprise tier, and what implementation adds.
This sits at the top of the band and stops short of the range. Four tiers are published with figures against a stated unit of total docketed matters: up to 50 matters at $60 per month, up to 100 at $100, up to 200 at $195 and up to 400 at $295, each with the optional Trademark Protection add-on priced alongside at $30, $40, $60 and $95. A docketed matter is defined in the page's own FAQ as a distinct trademark, patent or opposition filing. What implementation adds is answered directly and unusually: no setup fee, free bulk data migration completed within about a week, and unlimited support and training, with unlimited users on every tier. Above 400 matters the page invites contact, so the larger portfolios the vendor's own case studies feature, including one at nearly 13,000 live matters, are unpriced. One inconsistency worth noting: the page's meta description still advertises a $50 starting price against a table that reads $60.
No pricing published at any level. No price, no range, no tier structure and no unit of charge, and no indication of how the platform prices relative to the expert services sold alongside it, which is the structural question for a vendor selling both software subscriptions and analyst delivered watch and brand protection work. A trial is referenced on the TrademarkNow marketing surface, which lowers the barrier to evaluation without disclosing cost. Every route ends in a contact or demo request. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the TrademarkNow page, the pricing navigation and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Firm and Practice Coverage
Who the product is actually built for. AmLaw, midlaw, small firm and solo, in house departments, government and courts, and which practice areas are supported rather than merely claimed.
The product says what it is for with unusual candour. It is built for trademark practice and the vendor does not pretend otherwise: the Nolte study describes that firm keeping its patents on a separate patent-focused system while trademarks run on Alt Legal, and names the approach a best-in-class split docket, with the CEO publishing an article arguing the case. Supported matter types are itemised beyond trademarks, covering TTAB oppositions and cancellations, copyrights, disputes, licences, patents, state registrations and custom types, across 180-plus jurisdictions, and the buyers named run from solo practitioners through boutique firms to in-house departments, with a separate track for law schools and students. Boundaries are stated for practice areas but not for segments: no firm-size floor or ceiling is given, and government use is not addressed.
Coverage is enumerated with counts, modalities and specialist verticals, and it is the most complete statement of scope in this category. Registry and database coverage is stated numerically: 190 global registries, more than 1,100 global screening databases, and insights drawn from more than 1,000 sources. Matching modality coverage is the distinguishing element and no peer states it: phonetic, semantic and visual similarity are named as separate analytical dimensions, with a dedicated image recognition engine for logos and a separate industrial design search engine, so a practitioner can tell that word marks, device marks and registered designs are each addressed rather than assuming one search covers all. Corsearch Pharma extends coverage into regulatory drug name checks alongside trademark clearance, which is a genuinely distinct workflow. Brand protection coverage extends across marketplaces, gray market channels and content categories including books, gaming, music and film. Graded A because a buyer can verify scope against their own marks, classes and jurisdictions from published material. Held short of perfection because no jurisdiction list is published behind the 190 registry figure and no update lag or refresh frequency is stated.
The 12 legal signals, side by side
Recorded rather than graded. These are the questions a practitioner has to answer before a tool touches a client matter, and the answers are taken from public material only.
Client Data in Training
Can material a lawyer puts into this product be used to train a model?
The AI Filtering Assistant page makes the commitment twice, once for the external provider in the quoted line and once for Alt Legal itself, stating that logged operational data is never used to train AI models. It also limits what reaches the model at all, saying only the query, system instructions and structured filtering data are sent while customer records and portfolio data stay inside Alt Legal's infrastructure. No matching prohibition was located in the customer agreement, which refuses automated access and was read only in fragments, so this is recorded as a policy commitment on a product page rather than a contractual one.
Silent. The quoted phrase is the only data handling statement located and it describes storage as a product benefit rather than addressing use. No statement in either direction was found on whether customer search queries, candidate brand names, uploaded logo images or portfolio data are used to train or improve models. One published line makes the silence more consequential than usual: the vendor states that insights continuously improve detection accuracy and long term platform protection, which implies that signal derived from use feeds model improvement without stating whose data, on what basis, or whether customer content is included. The sensitivity here is commercial rather than personal: a search for an unlaunched brand name discloses product strategy before announcement. Recorded as silent, not as a negative commitment. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the screening page, the TrademarkNow page and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Prompt and Output Retention
How long does the product keep what a lawyer typed, and can that be set to zero?
Retention is split between the two parties and only one half is answered. The provider stores nothing, per the quoted line. Alt Legal itself does retain material, stating that it logs limited operational data such as queries, AI responses and performance metrics to monitor quality, reliability and security, with access restricted to authorised engineering and security personnel. No period is stated for those logs, no customer control over the window is described, and no zero-retention option is offered.
Not addressed. No retention period is published for search queries, generated risk assessments, watch notices or stored reports, and no deletion right is described. Retention is presented as a feature rather than a policy, with reports stored within the platform for later access, and nothing states for how long, under what terms, or what happens on termination. For clearance work the stored report is the sensitive artifact, since it records which names a company considered and rejected. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the TrademarkNow page, the platform logins page and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Ethical Walls and Matter Segregation
Does retrieval respect the firm’s ethical walls, or can the model read across them?
No located material addresses ethical walls, matter-level segregation, or whether the AI Filtering Assistant respects per-user access restrictions when it queries across a firm's docket. The assistant is described as searching across all of a user's matters, and the only access control published is an administrative switch that enables or disables the feature for the organisation as a whole. Searched the home page, the AI Filtering Assistant page, the Composer page, the pricing feature list, the GDPR page and the Nolte case study on 31 August 2026; the terms and privacy policy pages refuse automated access and were read only in fragments.
Not addressed, and this vendor presents the question in a sharper commercial form than any patent peer. Corsearch performs clearance and watch for large numbers of brand owners simultaneously, which means a search run for one client returns and analyses marks owned by others who are themselves customers, and Watch services monitor new filings on behalf of parties whose interests directly conflict. Nothing published describes what separates one customer's searches, candidate names and portfolio data from another's, whether analysts delivering Expert Watch for one brand owner work on matters adverse to them, or what governs staff access across the services business. The vendor states that results are visible across your teams, which is collaboration within a customer and not a boundary between customers. No permission model or segregation description of any kind was located. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the watch page, the screening page and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Third Party Request and Subpoena Notice
If someone subpoenas the vendor for a firm’s data, does the firm hear about it first?
The quoted commitment appears in the Alt Legal Assist terms of service, which govern the paralegal service rather than the docketing platform, and it runs further than most: on receiving a judicial or government order to disclose the other party's confidential information, the receiving party must give notice and a sufficient opportunity to contest the order, to the extent legally permissible. Whether the main platform agreement carries an equivalent clause could not be established, because its confidentiality section was recovered only in fragments from the search index after the terms page refused automated access. No transparency report was located.
Not addressed. No government or law enforcement request clause, no commitment to notify a customer before producing their data, and no transparency report were located. The vendor holds pre launch brand names, unpublished logo designs and clearance histories, which are commercially sensitive and would be of interest in a dispute, and it also operates enforcement services that involve identifying and acting against third party sellers, which puts it in contact with platform operators and potentially with authorities. Nothing published addresses any of it. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the brand protection pages and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Primary Law Corpus Provenance
Where does the law in this product come from, and does the vendor have the right to use it?
The product does not retrieve case law or statutes, so the corpus behind it is registry data rather than primary law, and that corpus is named specifically: the full USPTO ID Manual and roughly two million live registered marks in the Goods and Services Composer, and filing data from more than 180 IP offices for docketing. Currency is claimed, with the Composer said to stay in sync with current USPTO-acceptable language across all 45 NICE classes. No licence, rights basis or public-domain statement is given for any of it, and the arrangements for non-US offices are not described.
Named by count and type with no licensing basis stated. Coverage is quantified precisely: 190 global registries, more than 1,100 global screening databases, and insights from more than 1,000 sources, with the vendor separately publishing active trademark totals to the individual mark, which demonstrates the corpus is real and maintained. The licensing question is genuinely live here and unaddressed. Registry data is public, but common law and unregistered rights sources, company name registers, domain data and commercial screening databases are typically licensed or proprietary, and a corpus of more than 1,100 databases plainly extends well beyond the 190 registries. Nothing states which sources those are, on what basis they are held, or what update lag applies to any of them, which matters because a clearance search against stale data is a false negative waiting to surface.
Good Law Verification
Does the product tell you when the authority it just cited has been overruled?
No citator applies, because the product does not return legal authority whose subsequent history could be checked. The nearest analogue is status tracking rather than treatment: docketing pulls live status changes from IP office records, so a registration's current standing is maintained automatically, but that is registry currency rather than a good-law signal. Searched the home page, the Composer page, the AI page and the pricing feature list on 31 August 2026.
Own treatment signal, and this record BREAKS the pattern that held across all five patent vendors in this category. The trademark analogue of a currency check is status: whether a cited mark is live, abandoned, cancelled, expired or under opposition, because a clearance search that treats a dead mark as a blocker is as wrong as one that misses a live one. Status is a first class attribute of this product rather than an optional layer. The vendor publishes active trademark counts to the individual mark and forecasts them, its Analyze function surfaces active trademark owners in the market, Portfolio Analyzer creates and verifies portfolios, and Watch monitors on an ongoing basis for new filings and changes affecting registered rights, with a stated 75 percent faster notice turnaround. Recorded at own treatment signal rather than higher because no citator or status authority is named as a source, no statement describes how status is determined or how current it is, and no explicit claim is made that dead or cancelled marks are flagged as such in results.
Refusal and Uncertainty Behaviour
What does the product do when the answer is not in the corpus?
Nothing located describes what the AI Filtering Assistant does with a query it cannot parse or cannot satisfy. No abstention path, no confidence indicator and no error behaviour is published. The design does give the user something to check, since the assistant populates visible filters in the report rather than returning a bare answer, but the vendor does not describe this as an uncertainty mechanism. Searched the AI Filtering Assistant page, the home page and the pricing feature list on 31 August 2026.
Not addressed, with a graded output that is not the same thing. NameCheck is stated to provide a clear picture of trademark risk in seconds and the platform provides risk scoring, which grades the legal risk of a candidate mark rather than the model's confidence in its own retrieval. Those are different quantities and conflating them would be an error: a mark can be scored low risk because nothing similar exists, or because the search failed to find what does. Nothing published describes what the system does under uncertainty, whether a low confidence match is flagged, whether an ambiguous phonetic or visual similarity is surfaced for human review, or whether Automated Watch will escalate a notice it cannot classify. Given that the failure mode in clearance is a silent miss, this is the signal that matters most for this product and it is unanswered.
Fabricated Citation Record
Does a public court record exist involving output from this product?
Searched the AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin at HEC Paris, together with 2026 sanctions trackers and trade coverage, on 31 August 2026 on both the product and company name, which are the same. No court order, opinion or disciplinary record naming Alt Legal was located. This is a statement about the public record rather than about the product, and the failure mode this signal tracks fits it poorly: the AI feature builds report filters over a firm's own docket and generates no citations to authority.
None located, with the instrument named. General web searches combining the vendor and product names with court, order, sanction, negligence and clearance terms returned nothing on 29 Aug 2026, and no named docket database, trademark office record system or court record tracker was searched. Recorded as a statement about what this search found, not as a clearance. The exposure shape is distinctive: this product generates no citations to legal authority, so the analogous adverse finding would be a proceeding addressing reliance on a defective clearance search, which would surface as trademark infringement litigation where the adequacy of a clearance opinion is contested rather than in a sanctions order.
Bar Guidance Alignment
Has the vendor engaged in public with the ethics opinions its buyers are bound by?
No engagement with ABA Formal Opinion 512 or any state bar guidance on generative AI was located. The vendor publishes a substantial professional education programme, including accredited CLE, a webinar series on trademark law topics and a paralegal course and community, but none of the located material addresses the ethics obligations attaching to a lawyer's use of AI. Searched the home page, the AI page, the events and CLE pages and the blog index on 31 August 2026.
Not addressed. No named ethics opinion, no USPTO Rules of Professional Conduct reference, no bar guidance and no engagement with professional conduct rules was located, despite the vendor publishing an extensive content library of webinars and analysis aimed at in house counsel and outside IP advisors. That material addresses market trends, enforcement strategy and AI in brand protection without reaching the professional duties of the counsel relying on its output. Fifth of six records in this category at this value, with Patlytics the only exception. Checked the content library, the trademark solutions pages, the blog material and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Billing and Fee Posture
Does the vendor address what happens to the bill when the work takes an hour instead of six?
Nothing located addresses how AI-assisted work should be billed or disclosed to a client. The vendor does discuss fees elsewhere, describing custom tags used to distinguish which clients are billed for which tasks and noting that clients are not billed for checking the docket themselves, but that is client billing administration rather than the fee treatment of AI-assisted work. No record of what the assistant did on a given matter is described. Searched the AI page, the pricing page, the Nolte case study and the blog index on 31 August 2026.
Savings claims only, quantified across three distinct workflows. Published: clearance timelines reduced by up to 40 percent, watch review time cut by 50 to 70 percent, and notice turnaround 75 percent faster than other industry solutions, alongside a customer statement that TrademarkNow drove a 40 percent lift in an IP legal team's delivery speed for brand name clearance. Naming three separate workflows with different figures is more granular than a single headline and is credited as such, and none carries a baseline, sample, period or identification of the other industry solutions being compared against. Nothing appears on the client's side of the equation: no position on how AI assisted clearance work should be billed by a firm to its client, and no exportable record showing what portion of a clearance search or watch review was machine performed. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the clearance and watch pages and the press material on 29 Aug 2026.
Outside Counsel Guideline Readiness
Can a firm get this vendor through a client’s AI clause without a bespoke negotiation?
The GDPR page states that a customer wanting details of Alt Legal's sub-processors or a copy of its data protection agreement can obtain them by emailing the team, calling, or using live chat, and says the vendor regularly reviews its vendor agreements and data protection agreements. Both artifacts therefore exist and neither is published: they sit behind a human request rather than a self-serve portal or download. A firm could not assemble a client-facing AI disclosure from public material either, since the model provider behind the AI feature is not named anywhere.
Not addressed. No trust centre, security page, named certification, subprocessor list, named model provider, data processing agreement or documentation request route was located, so a firm has nothing it could forward to a client and no destination to point one toward. This is the only record in ip-and-patents at this value: Patlytics publishes certifications openly, DeepIP publishes them without a route, and PatSnap, Solve Intelligence and IP Author all operate trust centres reachable from their sites. Checked the trademark solutions pages, the platform logins page, the about section and the site navigation on 29 Aug 2026.
Court Disclosure Support
If a judge’s standing order requires an AI disclosure, can the product produce one?
Nothing located addresses producing an AI-use disclosure or a verification certification. No per-document or per-matter export covering which queries were run, what the assistant returned or who reviewed it is described. Searched the AI Filtering Assistant page, the pricing feature list covering reporting, and the home page on 31 August 2026. The obligation is a poor fit for this product, which builds docket reports rather than court filings, but the row is recorded rather than skipped.
Partial record, and the forum question is different here in a way that matters. A clearance search report is the artifact that surfaces in later infringement litigation, where what a brand owner knew before adoption bears on willfulness and enhanced damages, so the disclosure question is not about a filing but about what the search recorded and whether it can be produced years later. On that limb the product does something: reports are stored within the platform and remain retrievable, results are visible across teams, and a customer quote states that no oppositions have been filed against rights searched or cleared through the vendor. The gaps are the familiar two and a third specific to this record. Nothing indicates that output records which model produced a similarity assessment or when, nothing captures a human verification record showing that an analyst or attorney reviewed a result, and nothing states which databases were searched on a given date, which is precisely what a party defending the adequacy of its clearance would need to evidence.
The questions both sides leave open
Derived from the records above rather than written, so it cannot favour either vendor. Take these into both conversations and ask each side the same question.
- AI Governance and Bias Disclosure
- Security Certifications and Trust Center
- Ethical Walls and Matter Segregation
- Refusal and Uncertainty Behaviour
- Bar Guidance Alignment
Which one fits
Choose Alt Legal if
- You want the bill to follow the docket. Alt Legal publishes four tiers against a stated unit of total docketed matters, at 60 dollars a month up to 50 matters, 100 up to 100, 195 up to 200 and 295 up to 400, with the trademark protection add on priced alongside each, unlimited users on every tier, no setup fee, free bulk data migration and unlimited support and training.
- You need to tell your client exactly what leaves the building. Alt Legal's AI page states that only the query, the system instructions and structured filtering data are sent to the model, that customer records and portfolio data do not leave its controlled infrastructure, that the provider does not store prompts or responses, that logged operational data is never used to train models, and that an administrator can switch the assistant off entirely.
- Your docket spans more than trademarks and more than one office. Alt Legal derives matter data automatically from official filings across more than 180 IP offices, itemises the matter types it holds including TTAB oppositions and cancellations, copyrights, disputes, licences, patents and state registrations, and publishes a named customer study describing a top ten United States trademark filer running nearly 7,000 active USPTO matters on it.
Choose Corsearch if
- Your clearance has to reach beyond one register. Corsearch states coverage across 190 global registries, more than 1,100 screening databases and insights drawn from more than 1,000 sources, and separates the analytical dimensions rather than bundling them, naming phonetic, semantic and visual similarity, with a dedicated image recognition tool for logos and a separate industrial design search engine.
- You want to choose how much human judgement a matter gets. Corsearch sells oversight as a tier rather than implying it, offering Automated Watch using AI for monitoring at portfolio scale alongside Expert Watch providing bespoke strategy and analyst insight for complex, high value matters, with the same structure running through brand protection where AI detection is combined with an expert team.
- Your drug name clearance is two problems at once. Corsearch Pharma unifies trademark and regulatory checks in a single platform for drug name clearance, and the company publishes original research on the trademark estate itself, reporting 83,613,385 active trademarks at the end of 2023 against a forecast of 100,720,928 by 2026, which is a figure a reader can test against the registers.
In summary
Alt Legal
Alt Legal is trademark docketing software for IP practices, connecting to more than 180 intellectual property offices, deriving matter data automatically from official filings, calculating due dates and keeping a global portfolio synchronised, with a Section 2(d) watch, a goods and services composer and an AI filtering assistant that turns a typed request into report filters. The AI Legal Index grades it in the top two bands on seven of fifteen capability axes. It publishes four price tiers against a stated unit of docketed matters from 60 dollars a month, and states in its terms that it does not act as a law firm or as a substitute for a lawyer's advice. As of 31 August 2026 the index located no security attestation, no named model provider and no AI governance material.
Corsearch
Corsearch is a trademark and brand protection provider combining AI technology with analyst services, running clearance, screening, watch and portfolio management through TrademarkNow alongside counterfeit removal, seller identification and content protection. The AI Legal Index grades it in the top two bands on four of fifteen capability axes, with an A on coverage: it states 190 global registries, more than 1,100 screening databases and insights from more than 1,000 sources, and separates phonetic, semantic and visual similarity as distinct analytical dimensions. Oversight is sold as a tier, with Automated Watch alongside Expert Watch for complex matters. As of 29 August 2026 the index located no security certification, no training or retention position, no named model provider and no published price.
Questions buyers ask
Alt Legal vs Corsearch: which is better for trademark work?
The AI Legal Index places Alt Legal in the top two bands on seven of fifteen capability axes and Corsearch on four, and the two products sit at different ends of trademark practice. Alt Legal is docketing, priced by matter, with a published data flow for its AI feature. Corsearch is clearance, watch and brand protection at scale, with the broadest coverage statement in this category and almost nothing published about its own systems.
What does each cost?
Alt Legal publishes four tiers with figures and a stated unit, from 60 dollars a month for up to 50 docketed matters to 295 for up to 400, with the add on priced alongside each and unlimited users included, and portfolios above 400 matters invited to make contact. On Corsearch no price, range, tier or unit of charge was located at any level, including no indication of how the software subscription prices against the analyst delivered watch and brand protection work sold with it. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 3, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
What happens to your data when the AI runs?
Alt Legal answers precisely: the query, system instructions and structured filtering data go to the model, customer records and portfolio data stay inside its own infrastructure, the provider does not store prompts or responses, and logged operational data is never used to train. On Corsearch nothing was located stating whether search queries, candidate brand names or uploaded logos are used to train or improve models, and its material states that insights continuously improve detection accuracy without saying whose data supplies them. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 3, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which one is built for clearance and which for docketing?
They solve different halves of the same practice. Alt Legal is a docketing platform that derives matter data from official filings across more than 180 IP offices, calculates due dates and keeps a global portfolio in step, with watch and search tools alongside. Corsearch is a clearance and brand protection business built on 190 registries and more than 1,100 screening databases, with analyst services attached. One published customer study describes a firm deliberately splitting its docket, keeping patents elsewhere and trademarks on Alt Legal. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 3, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
What do Alt Legal and Corsearch both leave unpublished?
Neither publishes an independent security attestation: no SOC 2, ISO 27001, named auditor or report route was located on either record. Neither names the model or provider behind the AI it sells. Neither publishes an accuracy figure for the matching or filtering each depends on, which matters because the failure mode in this work is a silent miss rather than a visible error. And neither engages any bar or ethics guidance, including ABA Formal Opinion 512. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 3, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
The Corsearch record is thin in a specific way that a reader should understand before weighing it. No security certification, trust surface, training or retention position, model provider, hosting region or liability position was located on any page read, so ten of its fifteen rows record an absence across those surfaces rather than an unfavourable published term, and its efficiency claims are up to figures without a baseline, sample or period. On Alt Legal, the terms of service and privacy policy pages refuse automated access and were read only through fragments recovered from the search index, its GDPR page was last modified in May 2022, and the pricing page's own meta description advertises a 50 dollar starting price against a table reading 60. Corsearch was verified on 29 August 2026 and Alt Legal on 31 August 2026. Neither vendor reviewed this page.
Neither vendor paid for inclusion, placement or a grade, and neither reviewed this page before it published. Everything above comes from public material on the dates shown. How the index grades.