Anaqua vs Questel: how they compare in 2026
Anaqua and Questel are the two enterprise IP management suites a corporate patent department runs against each other in procurement. Both are established platforms with an AI layer added rather than AI native products. Neither publishes a customer agreement, so a buyer reads both positions in policy rather than in contract. The split between them is clear. Questel answers the AI questions. It states that information submitted for inference is not used to train or fine tune its models, and that the customer controls the retention period, with deleted conversations removed within 30 days. It names OpenAI alongside the Mixtral, Falcon and Llama 2 families. Anaqua answers the infrastructure questions. It runs a single dedicated instance per customer on Microsoft Azure, with data location options across the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and India. A separate AnaquaGov environment is assessed against NIST SP 800-171, and Schellman is named as the auditor behind its SOC 2 examination and ISO 27001 certification.
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.
An established system has an AI layer that is real but peripheral. AQX is a twenty year old IP management system whose core is docketing, deadline calculation, renewals, prosecution workflow, document management and IP financial management, none of which depends on machine learning. Four AI features sit on top: a patent classifier, generative AI Patent Summaries in AcclaimIP, document auto processing of patent office correspondence using Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence, and WiseTime's AI Narrative for invoice descriptions. Each is separate and separately marketed, and each speeds up a workflow that already existed. Remove all four and a full enterprise IP management system remains.
An AI layer sits on a database, management and services business that would stand without it. The core is a patent and trademark database business, an IP management system for docketing, renewals and forecasting, and a human services arm that handles filings, EP validation and translation through a network described as 320 agents and 1,200 translators. The AI features are discrete and marketed separately, among them the AI-Classifier, Qthena for prosecution workflow and Sophia, an agent that works across the platform. Remove them all and the databases, the management system and the services business remain. The one component that would not survive is generative patent drafting, which is built on the models and came with the acquisition of qatent, and it is one product in a suite of roughly thirty.
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 asserted repeatedly and measured nowhere. AI Patent Summaries is said to give a consistent, high quality review of any patent, the classifier promises explainable AI insights, and the Adaptable principle commits to keeping the AI tools accurate and relevant through regular training and refinement. No benchmark, test set, error rate or named failure mode is published on the AI initiatives page, the guiding principles page or the security page. The product summarizes and classifies patent documents rather than citing legal authority, so citation checking does not apply. The real risk is a wrong summary or misclassification feeding a portfolio decision, and nothing published says how often that happens. The linked AcclaimIP article on the summaries feature was not opened and may say more.
Accuracy is discussed at length and measured nowhere located. The Trusted AI page carries a heading on transparency in the accuracy of results, and the text under it describes intentions rather than shipped behavior. The AI Policy disclaims the absolute accuracy of AI content and acknowledges the potential for hallucinations, which is a disclosure rather than a measurement. A press release on the home page announces that the Questel AI Lab built a proprietary model to benchmark and improve semantic patent retrieval. That release was not opened and may say more. No benchmark figure, test set or error rate is published on the home page, the AI Policy, the Trusted AI page or the AI in IP solutions entry.
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.
One review surface is described and the rest is asserted. In WiseTime the timekeeper sees a timesheet and can adjust durations, activity codes, matter references and the activity description, either manually or using AI Narrative, which is a concrete and editable checkpoint. Against that, the Explainable principle commits to a clear understanding of how AI models perform and for what purpose without describing any mechanism that delivers it, and the highest-consequence automation on the platform has no published control at all: auto-processing takes correspondence from the US, EU, Japanese and WIPO offices into the docket, where an error becomes a missed deadline, and nothing states what a human checks or when the system stops. No threshold, no confidence gate, and no statement of what happens after the system is wrong is published.
Oversight is asserted repeatedly and no mechanism is described. The Trusted AI page says full automation is ideal in some instances, while in others AI should act as a supportive tool or human judgment is necessary, and that the balance must be found. That names the question without answering it for any product. The AI Policy places the duty on the buyer, making clients responsible for reviewing and verifying accuracy and completeness. The products are marketed as copilots and assistants. No surface read states what any feature runs unattended, where a reviewer sits in the workflow, what threshold stops the system, or what happens after it is wrong. The gap matters most for the office action response and patent drafting assistants, whose output is a document heading toward a patent office deadline.
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 attribution is senior and the measurement is absent. Named executives are quoted with titles and employers: Lars Kellberg, Corporate VP of Corporate Patents at Novo Nordisk; Toe Su Aung, Head of IP at British American Tobacco; Hans Pennings at NXP Semiconductors, describing a 25,000 patent portfolio across nine innovation centers; Dr Udo Meyer, SVP of Global IP at BASF; and Christof Wolpert and Sara Halton at adidas on the HyperView analytics tool. Corporate and law firm logos run from TSMC, GSK, ARM and BD to Thompson Coburn, Michael Best, Lewis Rice and Conley Rose, and a 2026 announcement names Innomotics as a new client. No figure shows what changed: the quotes describe satisfaction and scale, none is dated, and several give the speaker's former role. The client stories library and client reviews page were not opened and may say more.
Customers are named against specific products, and no figure attaches to any of them. Dated client announcements on the home page and in the product navigation pair an organization with a product. ELT Group selected Orbit Intelligence, Fideon selected Equinox Law Firm, and HGF expanded Qthena across its patent practice after what is described as years of successful deployment. A separate case study describes how Equinox Law Firm supports Redchip Lawyers. The home page also runs a logo strip showing Sanofi, PepsiCo and Novartis among others, without attribution. The claim of more than 20,000 clients in 30 countries carries no basis. These rest on announcement headlines; the client stories library and the individual announcement bodies were not opened and may hold measured outcomes.
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 architecture is specific and the central question is unanswered. Anaqua publishes single tenant hosting with a dedicated instance per customer, record level security with permissions by role, SSO tied to HR systems so access ends when staff leave, AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 in transit, and a dedicated SFTP site for sharing files with outside counsel. The Secure AI principle adds that no AI insights or data are shared between unintended recipients. Nothing located says whether client IP data is used to train or refine Anaqua's models, which a patent department asks first. The Adaptable principle's mention of regular training and refinement makes that silence more pointed. Privilege and work product are never mentioned, no retention or deletion position is published for portfolio content as distinct from personal data, and no customer agreement on the site could make any of this a commitment.
Confidentiality commitments are published and readable in advance, and they sit in policy rather than in a contract. The Trusted AI page confirms that the customer owns its inputs and outputs, and says the design removes the risk of revealing information relating to the representation of a client. The training, encryption and retention commitments on the same page add to that, as does the undertaking the AI Policy takes from third party providers. Article 5 of the AI Policy also tells clients not to submit confidential information they do not wish the AI engine to process. The agreements the AI Policy says govern all of this are referenced as signed with clients and are not published anywhere on the site.
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. Where the advice line is not the duty a product raises, the axis is read through the nearest professional duty it does raise: judicial conduct rules and the reviewing duty for products sold only to courts, and the duty to bill for time actually spent for products that draft time entries.
Nothing published addresses the advice line for the product. The website Terms of Use of 19 May 2025 say the materials are not legal advice, but they cover only the anaqua.com website and its visitors, not AQX users. The home page, AQX Corporate and Law Firm pages, AI initiatives page, guiding AI principles page, security and hosting page, privacy policy and Terms of Use were searched. No statement of what the product is and is not, no supervision or competence discussion, no jurisdiction limit and no engagement with ABA Formal Opinion 512 or any bar guidance is published. That matters on a platform sold to law firms whose docketing output is a computed filing deadline. Not every AQX Law Firm page was opened, and those may say more.
A position on advice versus tooling is published, in a document about the product rather than the website. AI Policy Article 5 states that Questel's Services are not intended to replace or substitute the expertise and judgment of legal professionals. Clients should seek professional legal advice before relying on AI generated outputs, and use of the Services remains under each client's professional responsibility. That is an advice line set in product terms rather than a disclaimer buried in website terms. No jurisdiction limits are named, nothing addresses a practitioner's supervision or competence duties, and no professional conduct guidance is engaged on the pages read.
AI Governance and Bias Disclosure
Published governance over model behavior: who owns it inside the vendor, what is tested before release, and what is disclosed about disparate output across matter types, parties, or populations.
Anaqua publishes a dedicated guiding AI principles page setting out six principles, and it carries more than the usual list of adjectives. It names an external framework, stating that Anaqua follows the EU AI Ethics Guidelines for the responsible use and development of AI and that its principles will change as AI law does. It commits to data minimization, saying models have access to only the minimum data necessary. It commits to explainability in specific terms, covering how models perform, how AI is used and for what purpose, with regular updates to clients. And it describes a real development process, with AI capabilities built through named client committees and working groups. What is absent is what would make it auditable: no owner inside Anaqua is named as accountable, no pre-release testing regime is described, and no results are disclosed. The claim that models are transparent, fair and unbiased is asserted without any supporting evaluation, which is the single largest gap on a tool that classifies patents into technology categories.
A group governance framework is published with a named regulation and an internal structure, and with no owner, testing or results. Questel's Artificial Intelligence Policy applies across Questel SAS and its affiliates in six articles. It commits to complying with the EU AI Act, naming the regulation and its entry into force on 12 July 2024. Article 6 describes an AI Committee and a dedicated AI taskforce drawing on the legal, information security and data privacy functions, along with ongoing staff training on ethics, data privacy and security. Article 4 commits to safeguards against bias, among other misuse. The Trusted AI page adds an AI oversight committee, and says every conversation starts with whether the company should do something rather than whether it can. No individual is named as accountable, no testing before release is described, and no evaluation results are disclosed, so the commitment to prevent bias is asserted rather than shown.
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 across two documents. The security and hosting page gives AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2 in transit, regular Azure backups with restore capability, SSO with role based provisioning, and access control at record level. The October 2023 privacy policy ties retention to the customer relationship plus a reasonable period, notes that anonymized data may be kept indefinitely, and confirms Anaqua as processor with the customer as controller. It also commits to EU Standard Contractual Clauses for onward transfers from the EU, limits internal access to those who need it, and names a Privacy Officer with postal and email addresses. The California policy commits to notifying affected people and regulators of a suspected breach where law requires. No subprocessor list is published anywhere. Retention and deletion are framed around personal data only, with nothing on portfolio documents or AI inputs after processing.
Stewardship of AI data is specific, and the policy around the rest of the account is thin. The Trusted AI page gives AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2 or better in transit. It limits access to authorized employees who need it for engineering support, abuse investigation or legal compliance, plus specified contractors. Retention of AI conversations is under the customer's control. The Data Privacy Policy, updated May 2026, states no retention period at all, saying data is kept as long as necessary and pointing to an email address for more. Its third party section names thirteen website marketing and analytics tools, Google Analytics and LinkedIn Ads among them, and no processor that touches customer IP data. Incident practice is described only as notifying the supervisory authority and, where required, data subjects, with no commitment to customers.
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.
There is no customer agreement on the site. The only published contract is the website Terms and Conditions of Use, which says at the start that it governs use of www.anaqua.com, so its disclaimer and liability clauses cover the site's materials rather than AQX. The footer, security and hosting page, AQX Corporate and Law Firm pages, privacy policy and resource library were searched. No subscription or service agreement, indemnity, liability cap, warranty on output or insurance position covering the software is published. A buyer cannot learn who bears the loss if the classifier misfiles a patent or auto processing mishandles an office action until they are in a negotiation.
An accuracy disclaimer reaches the products, and the customer agreement does not appear in public. Article 5 of the AI Policy states that Questel does not guarantee the absolute accuracy of AI content generated by its Services and disclaims any liability for inaccuracies, given the potential for errors or hallucinations inherent to AI. That allocation of loss can be read before signing, and it is scoped to the Services rather than to the website. Article 2 refers to a Master Services Agreement and a Data Processing Agreement signed between Questel and its clients, and neither is published. No indemnity, liability cap, carve out, warranty on output or insurance position is published. The legal notice, a French mentions legales, is scoped by its own text to the corporate website and disclaims liability only for the site and its materials.
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.
The connections are named and several are described in terms of what actually moves. Document auto-processing ingests correspondence from the four largest patent offices, identified as the US, WIPO, European and Japanese offices, with a separate integration to USPTO TSDR for trademark teams and prior art import into the IDS process. SSO integrates with HR systems specifically so that permissions are removed when employees leave, which is a described direction of sync rather than a logo. Anaqua also owns and sells SeeUnity as its application integration product, and a dedicated SFTP site handles file exchange with outside counsel and partners. What is not published is a public integrations directory or API reference on anaqua.com that an implementer could work from, and the SeeUnity property itself was not opened this session, so the depth of the document management connections it provides is not established here.
Integration is a named commercial position, and the direction of movement is stated for specific cases. Questel markets an Integrated IP Ecosystem and describes its management system as directly integrated with leading IP renewal services and IP databases. Two connections are concrete. PAVIS Connect is sold as a renewals connector for companies and law firms that already run an IP management system, an integration into a competitor's system rather than a demand to migrate. The Markify Watch integration lets users reach trademark watches from within Equinox. An IP Services Portal handles ordering and monitoring of services. No public API reference, developer portal or integration documentation is published, and no connection to a document management system such as iManage or NetDocuments was found.
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.
The deployment disclosure is detailed. The security and hosting page states single tenant hosting, a dedicated instance of the application for each customer, on Microsoft Azure, with data location options in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and India. It describes a second deployment option and what changes in it: AnaquaGov runs AQX in Azure Government, limits access to US citizens, residents and permanent residents, holds CUI and export controlled data, has been independently assessed against NIST SP 800-171, and adds configurable US export control procedures. A hosting data sheet is published alongside. Processing location is not addressed separately from storage. In particular, nothing says where the AI features process data, which matters when one of them runs on a Microsoft AI service.
Cloud delivery runs through the material, and neither tenancy nor a region is stated. The AI Policy describes the products as SaaS software solutions, and the Trusted AI page refers to business data stored on Questel systems. Nothing located names a hosting provider, a data center location or a country or region option, or says whether customers share infrastructure or receive a dedicated instance. The only geography published is the privacy policy's transfer section. It says data may move to countries with different protection laws, with transfers out of the European Union covered by intra group agreements incorporating Standard Contractual Clauses and by clauses with third parties. That describes the legal basis for movement rather than where anything sits, and it covers personal data rather than the IP portfolios and unpublished applications the platform holds.
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.
The certifications are real, named and scoped. The security and hosting page states ISO 27001 certification and a SOC 2 Type 2 examination of the information security management system supporting Anaqua's infrastructure and services. Anaqua's press releases name Schellman & Company as auditor for both the SOC 2 examination and the 2017 ISO 27001 certification, and as the C3PAO that assessed the AnaquaGov enclave against NIST SP 800-171; ISO 9001 is also claimed. Access and currency are missing. There is no trust portal, no route to request a report, and no examination period or certificate date on any current page. A buyer in 2026 can see which standards are claimed but cannot confirm the attestation is current or obtain it without a sales conversation.
ISO 27001 certification is stated in prose, and the evidence behind it is not published. AI Policy Article 3 says Questel is an ISO 27001 certified company adhering to international standards for information security management, and an ISO mark appears on the home page. No scope statement, certificate date or validity period, auditor or certification body is published, and no SOC 2 or other attestation is claimed. There is no trust center or security portal, and no route to request a report or a completed questionnaire is published. The privacy policy points to a Questel IT Security Policy that is referenced but not published.
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.
One component is named and the rest are not. The AI initiatives page names Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence as the service behind prior art import for the IDS process, a real disclosure. For the patent classifier, the generative AI Patent Summaries and WiseTime's AI Narrative, no model, model family, provider or version is published, and no commitment to notify customers of changes was found. The Azure hosting is described in detail, but naming the cloud a system runs in does not identify the model inside it. A firm asked by a client which model reads its unpublished patent text cannot answer from published material.
The providers and model families are named, and the disclosure may be out of date. The Trusted AI page says Questel uses generative models from OpenAI through API integrations, and open source models identified as Mixtral, Falcon and Llama 2, fine tuned on proprietary data sets with prompts optimized in house. No commitment to notify customers when the model set changes is published. Where the models run is only partly answered: the OpenAI relationship is an API integration, and nothing says where the open source models are hosted. Llama 2 and Falcon are older model generations, and a 2026 press release on the home page announces a new Questel AI Lab model for semantic patent search that the Trusted AI page does not mention. The page may no longer describe the system in use.
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.
No pricing information is published at any level. There is no pricing page, no pricing entry in the navigation, no tier or package names, no unit of charge, and no indication of what implementation adds. Every commercial route on the site leads to Contact Us or Schedule a Call With an Expert. The absence is consistent with an enterprise sales model and it is still an absence: a buyer cannot learn the unit Anaqua charges on, let alone a figure. Note that QuantifyIP, listed under software as IP cost forecasting, forecasts a client's own patent office costs and says nothing about the price of Anaqua.
The shape of the offering is visible and the price is nowhere. Tiering is published across Equinox, Orbit and Markify, each split into named editions or modules, so the packaging and roughly which segment each tier addresses can be seen. No rate, band, unit of charge, currency or statement of what implementation adds is published, and every page read routes buyers to Request a call or Contact. Two products carry a BUY ONLINE label in the navigation, Defensive Publication and Markify Comprehensive Search, which points to a self serve purchase path. Neither page was opened, and either may show a price.
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.
Segment coverage is described with substance, with separate products behind it. Anaqua sells AQX Corporate to in house IP departments, AQX Law Firm to firms, AQX Pharma as an industry edition, PATTSY WAVE to buyers led by docketing, and AnaquaGov to US government contractors handling controlled unclassified information. The client list covers both main segments, from adidas, TSMC, GSK and BASF on the corporate side to Thompson Coburn, Michael Best and Conley Rose among firms. Practice coverage spans patents, trademarks, domain names, and innovation and partnership management, with analytics and annuity services alongside. No statement of firm size, portfolio size, or the practice areas or jurisdictions where the product is a poor fit is published.
Segments are documented with substance, and the boundary is left open. Questel publishes solution entries for law firms, life sciences and R&D and innovation teams, and the product line encodes the segmentation. Equinox ships as separate corporate and law firm editions, each with an enterprise variant, and the trademark side mirrors the same split. Practice coverage is broad and specific, spanning patents, trademarks, designs and domain names, with use cases from patentability and freedom to operate to clearance, prosecution and renewals. The life sciences entry names the products that serve that vertical. No statement of firm size, portfolio size, minimum engagement, or the practice areas and jurisdictions the suite does not serve was found on the solutions pages or the home page.
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?
No customer agreement is published, and no policy page states a position on training. Searched the AI initiatives and capabilities page, the guiding AI principles page, the security and hosting page, the global and California privacy policies and the website Terms of Use on 31 August 2026. The nearest statements point in opposite directions and neither answers the question: the Secure principle says no AI-driven insights or data are shared between unintended recipients, which is about segregation, while the Adaptable principle says the AI tools are maintained through regular training and refinement, without saying what they are trained on. There is no customer agreement published in which a prohibition could sit.
Training on customer inputs is ruled out in policy, and no published agreement carries it. The Trusted AI page lists the commitment first, covering information a user provides for AI inference such as a question, an invention description or an action query, which it acknowledges is often confidential client information. AI Policy Article 3 extends the same requirement to third party providers, which undertake not to use client data to train or improve their own AI or machine learning models. The agreements the AI Policy refers to are not published, so the prohibition cannot be read as contractual.
Prompt and Output Retention
How long does the product keep what a lawyer typed, and can that be set to zero?
No located material states how long AI inputs or outputs are kept, whether a customer can configure that, or whether zero retention is available. The privacy policy addresses retention only for personal data, tying it to the length of the customer relationship plus a reasonable period afterwards, and noting that anonymized data may be kept without time limit; it does not reach patent text, classifier inputs or generated summaries.
Searched the AI initiatives page, the guiding AI principles page, the security and hosting page and both privacy policies on 31 August 2026.
Customer control is stated directly, with a concrete deletion window. The Trusted AI page says the customer controls the retention period, that zero data retention applies once a customer leaves, and that deleted conversations are removed from Questel systems within 30 days unless retention is legally required. Zero retention is not offered as a setting during use. The commitment covers AI inference data, not the wider account.
Ethical Walls and Matter Segregation
Does retrieval respect the firm’s ethical walls, or can the model read across them?
AQX maintains its own permission model rather than inheriting one from a document system. The security and hosting page describes record-level security with permissions based on each user account's role, alongside SSO and role-based security integrated with HR systems so that permissions are removed when employees leave, which reduces the drift that a separate permission model usually creates. Hosting is single-tenant, giving separation between customers as well as within them.
What is not addressed is whether the AI features honor those record-level permissions at query time, which is the question that matters for the classifier and the summarizer.
Access control is claimed and no enforcement detail is published. The privacy policy lists roles based data access alongside encryption and intrusion detection. No permission model is described, nor how it is administered or whether it applies per user at query time. Nothing addresses walls or segregation by matter inside a customer account. That is a live question because Equinox is sold in law firm editions, and because Sophia is marketed as an agent reaching across Questel's software. Searched the privacy policy, the AI Policy, the Trusted AI page and the law firm solutions entry on 1 September 2026.
Third Party Request and Subpoena Notice
If someone subpoenas the vendor for a firm’s data, does the firm hear about it first?
Disclosure is addressed and notice is not. The privacy policy states that Anaqua may provide personal data to third parties to comply, when required by law, with court or administrative orders, civil or criminal subpoenas, warrants from law enforcement, regulatory requirements, mandatory governmental audits and grand jury investigations, and separately that it may be required to disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities.
No commitment to notify the customer first, and no transparency report, was located. Note also that the policy governs personal data rather than the IP portfolio content a firm would most want notice about. Searched both privacy policies, the Terms of Use and the security page on 31 August 2026.
Personal data may go to authorities under legal obligation with no notice promised, and nothing covers the IP files customers hold. Questel's Data Privacy Policy, updated May 2026 and read on 3 October 2026, lists duly authorized public authorities, judicial and control, among recipients of personal data under Questel's legal obligations. No commitment to tell the customer comes with it. That clause covers personal data, not the patent, trademark and client files held in Questel's software, and nothing published addresses a legal demand for that content; the AI Policy, the Trusted AI page and the legal notice were checked on 1 September 2026. The agreements signed with clients are not published, so their notice terms are unknown. Verified 3 October 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; it works on patent and trademark registry data, with sources identified by office. Document auto processing handles correspondence from the four largest patent offices, named as the US, WIPO, European and Japanese offices, with a separate integration to USPTO TSDR for trademarks. No license, rights basis or update schedule is stated for any of it. The data behind AcclaimIP patent search and analytics is not described on the pages read on 31 August 2026; the AcclaimIP site was not opened and may say more.
Registry text rather than case law sits underneath, and Questel publishes it as a database owner, describing its offering as a unique collection of IP databases. The Trusted AI page says the models are fine tuned and optimized on public patent, trademark and design text, or on Questel's own data. It commits to acknowledging the source of training data and confirming permission to use it, with open source data or data provided by users as the examples, which is a principle rather than a rights position.
No license or rights basis is stated for any individual source, and no coverage figure or update cadence was located. Checked the home page, the Trusted AI page, the AI Policy and the Orbit product entries on 1 September 2026.
Good Law Verification
Does the product tell you when the authority it just cited has been overruled?
No citator applies. The product does not return legal authority whose subsequent history could be checked; it manages registrations and summarizes patent documents. The nearest analog is registry currency rather than treatment, since docketing keeps status aligned with patent office records. Searched the AI initiatives page, the security page and the AQX Corporate entries on 31 August 2026.
No citator applies. The suite manages and searches registered rights rather than returning legal authority whose later history could be checked. The nearest analog is registry currency, which the product does address: Prosecution Pack is described as providing grant statistics and detailed legal status analysis, and the IP management system exists to keep portfolio status aligned with office records. That is the status of a registration, not a judgment about whether an authority still stands. Searched the Orbit entries, Prosecution Pack, the AI Policy and the Trusted AI page on 1 September 2026.
Refusal and Uncertainty Behavior
What does the product do when the answer is not in the corpus?
Nothing located describes what any of the four AI features does when it cannot produce a reliable result. No abstention path, no confidence score and no low-certainty flag is published for the classifier, the summarizer or document auto-processing. The guiding AI principles page commits to explaining how models perform, which is a commitment to describe behavior rather than a description of it. Searched the AI initiatives page, the guiding AI principles page and the AQX Corporate IP operations entry on 31 August 2026.
Nothing located describes what any Questel AI feature does when it cannot support an answer. The Trusted AI page says users need to be informed of AI use and of uncertainty in its responses, and given the means to verify them, and that this will be achieved by providing sources and explaining the reasons behind answers. That is written in the future tense and describes what the company considers necessary, not what a product does.
No abstention path, confidence score or flag for low certainty is documented for Sophia, Qthena or the drafting assistants. Searched the Trusted AI page, the AI Policy and the AI assistant entries on 1 September 2026.
Fabricated Citation Record
Does a public court record exist addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations in output from this product?
Searched the AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin at HEC Paris, with 2026 sanctions trackers and trade coverage, on 31 August 2026, for the company name and the AQX product name. No court order, opinion or disciplinary record naming Anaqua or AQX was located. This is a statement about the public record, not about the product. The failure mode fits poorly: the AI features classify and summarize patent documents and process office correspondence, and none generates citations to legal authority for filing.
No court order, opinion or disciplinary record naming Questel or its products was located. The AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin at HEC Paris, 2026 sanctions trackers and trade coverage were searched on 1 September 2026, on the company name and on Orbit, Sophia and Qthena. The result describes the public record, not the product. Most of the AI here classifies, searches or manages registry data, but the drafting and office action assistants produce text that enters patent office proceedings, outside the litigation filings the tracker mainly captures.
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, USPTO practitioner guidance on AI, or any state bar opinion was located. The guiding AI principles page names an external framework, the EU AI Ethics Guidelines, and commits to adapting as AI regulation evolves, but that is technology regulation rather than the professional responsibility guidance binding the firms Anaqua sells to. Searched the AI initiatives page, the guiding AI principles page, the AQX Law Firm entry and the resource library on 31 August 2026.
Professional responsibility is acknowledged in general terms, with no guidance named. The AI Policy's advice line is the whole of it. No reference to ABA Formal Opinion 512, USPTO practitioner guidance on artificial intelligence, EPO or national patent attorney conduct rules, or any bar opinion was located, though the vendor sells prosecution assistants to law firms. The EU AI Act is named in Article 1, but it is technology regulation binding Questel rather than professional conduct guidance binding its buyers.
Billing and Fee Posture
Does the vendor address what happens to the bill when the work takes an hour instead of six?
WiseTime produces a reviewable per-matter time record: users see a timesheet and can adjust durations, activity codes, matter references and the activity description, either manually or using the AI Narrative feature that drafts invoice summaries. That is a usable record a firm could interrogate, and the AI-drafted element is identified as such to the timekeeper. No guidance on how AI-assisted work should be billed or disclosed to a client accompanies it.
The marketing runs the other way from a savings claim, describing WiseTime as increasing the amount of billable time captured, and the client-side implication of that is not addressed.
Time savings are claimed and the client's side of the bill is never addressed. The home page invites readers to imagine the time an AI driven IP management system could save, and the resource library carries pieces on saving time in prosecution work and on Equinox Law Firm. Nothing covers how a firm should bill for or disclose AI assisted drafting, office action responses or search work. Questel's invoice, cost management and fee audit services concern a client's own IP spend with outside agents, not AI assisted time on a law firm's invoice, and no record of AI assisted work was located for any product.
Outside Counsel Guideline Readiness
Can a firm get this vendor through a client’s AI clause without a bespoke negotiation?
No subprocessor list, data processing addendum or client-facing disclosure pack is published, and no route to request one was located. What a firm can point to is thin and partial: Microsoft Azure is named as the hosting provider, Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence is named as the service behind prior art import, and the privacy policy commits to EU Standard Contractual Clauses for onward transfers and describes categories of recipients without naming them.
The model providers behind the classifier, the generative summarizer and the AI narrative generator are not identified, so the question an outside counsel guideline actually asks cannot be answered from public material. Searched the security page, both privacy policies, the AI pages and the Terms of Use on 31 August 2026.
Model providers are published and a subprocessor list is not, which answers half of a client's AI clause. The providers named on the Trusted AI page are the published part. No subprocessor list covering the products exists, since the privacy policy names website tools and no processor of customer IP data. No data processing addendum or disclosure pack for clients is published, and no route to obtain one without an agreement was located.
AI Policy Article 2 claims full transparency on third party providers as set out in the personal data policy, and on the surfaces read that claim is not met.
Court Disclosure Support
If a judge’s standing order requires an AI disclosure, can the product produce one?
Nothing located addresses producing a disclosure of AI use or a verification certificate. No export showing which model produced a summary or classification, what it drew on, or who reviewed it is described for any of the four AI features. Searched the AI initiatives page, the guiding AI principles page, the security page and the reporting and analytics page on 31 August 2026. The question fits this product poorly, since its output supports portfolio management and prosecution administration rather than court filings.
No AI use disclosure or verification certificate can be produced from anything located. The Trusted AI page recognizes an obligation to disclose clearly when content was generated autonomously by AI. That is labeling for users, described as an obligation rather than an exportable record, and no product is said to implement it. No export ties a passage to the model that produced it, the sources it drew on or the person who reviewed it, for Sophia, Qthena or the drafting assistants.
The obligation fits prosecution work imperfectly. Searched the Trusted AI page, the AI Policy and the AI assistant entries on 1 September 2026.
The questions both sides leave open
Derived from the records above rather than written, so it cannot favor either vendor. Take these into both conversations and ask each side the same question.
- Third Party Request and Subpoena Notice
- Good Law Verification
- Refusal and Uncertainty Behavior
- Court Disclosure Support
Which one fits
Choose Anaqua if
- You have to place portfolio data in a named jurisdiction. Anaqua publishes single tenant hosting with a dedicated instance for each customer on Microsoft Azure, data location options in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and India, and a separate AnaquaGov environment for controlled unclassified and export controlled data assessed against NIST SP 800-171.
- You need the auditor named, not only the standard claimed. Anaqua's own announcements name Schellman as the firm behind its SOC 2 Type 2 examination and its ISO 27001 certification, and as the assessor of the AnaquaGov enclave, although no examination period or certificate date appears on a current page.
- Your docketing team lives or dies by the permission model. Anaqua describes record level security with permissions set by user role and single sign on tied to HR systems so access is removed when staff leave, and WiseTime produces an editable per matter time record where the AI drafted narrative can be amended by the timekeeper.
Choose Questel if
- Unpublished invention disclosures go into the tool. Questel states that information submitted for AI inference is not used to train or fine tune its models, that third party providers undertake the same, that the customer controls the retention period, and that deleted conversations are removed within 30 days unless retention is legally required.
- You have to tell a client whose model reads the application text. Questel names OpenAI as its generative provider and identifies Mixtral, Falcon and Llama 2 as open source families fine tuned in house, while Anaqua names a provider behind only one of its four AI features.
- You want a published position on where the tool stops. Questel's AI Policy states that the services are not intended to replace the expertise and judgment of legal professionals, that clients should seek professional legal advice before relying on generated output, and that Questel does not guarantee absolute accuracy, with an AI Committee drawn from its legal, security, privacy and business functions.
In summary
Anaqua
Anaqua is enterprise intellectual property management software for corporate IP departments and law firms. It runs patent and trademark portfolios through docketing, prosecution workflow, renewals, IP financial management and analytics on its AQX platform. According to the AI Legal Index, its most specific published material is architectural: single tenant hosting with a dedicated instance for each customer on Microsoft Azure, and data location options in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and India. A separate AnaquaGov environment is assessed against NIST SP 800-171, and Schellman is named as auditor for both its SOC 2 examination and its ISO 27001 certification. It publishes no statement on whether client IP data trains its models, no customer agreement and no pricing at any level.
Questel
Questel is an intellectual property suite covering patents, trademarks, designs and domain names, sold to corporate IP departments, law firms and research teams. It combines the Orbit search and analytics family, the Equinox IP management system and a large services arm. According to the AI Legal Index, its strongest published material is the Trusted AI page and the group AI Policy. Information submitted for inference is stated not to train or fine tune Questel models, and the customer controls retention, with deleted conversations removed within 30 days. OpenAI is named as the generative provider alongside the Mixtral, Falcon and Llama 2 families. It publishes no tenancy or region statement, no Master Services Agreement and no price.
Questions buyers ask
Anaqua vs Questel: which is better for a corporate IP department?
Both are established platforms carrying an AI layer rather than AI native products. Questel publishes more about the AI itself, covering training, retention and model providers. Anaqua publishes more about where the software runs, covering single tenant hosting, five data location options and a government enclave. Neither publishes a customer agreement. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 2, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Does Questel use client data to train its AI?
Questel states on its Trusted AI page that information a user submits for AI inference is not used to train or fine tune its models, and its AI Policy states that third party providers undertake not to use client data to train their own models. Both statements sit in published policy rather than in an agreement. The Master Services Agreement and data processing addendum are referenced as signed with clients and are not published. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 2, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
What does Anaqua publish about hosting and data residency?
Anaqua publishes single tenant hosting, described as one dedicated instance of the application deployed for each customer, running on Microsoft Azure, with data location options in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and India. A second tier, AnaquaGov, runs in Azure Government, restricts access to United States citizens, residents and lawful permanent residents, and has been independently assessed against NIST SP 800-171. Where the AI features process data is not stated separately from where data is stored. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 2, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which one names the AI models it uses?
Questel, across most of its stack. It names OpenAI as its generative provider and identifies Mixtral, Falcon and Llama 2 as open source families fine tuned in house. Anaqua names Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence behind prior art import for the IDS process, and names no model or provider for its patent classifier, its generative patent summaries or the WiseTime narrative feature. Neither commits to notifying customers when the model set changes. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 2, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
What do Anaqua and Questel both leave unpublished?
Neither publishes a customer agreement a buyer can read before signing. Questel's AI Policy does disclaim liability for AI inaccuracies, and beyond that neither states an indemnity, a liability cap, a warranty on output or an insurance position. Neither publishes an accuracy measurement such as a benchmark, test set or error rate. Neither publishes a price. And neither documents an abstention path or a confidence signal when its AI cannot produce a reliable result. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 2, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Neither vendor paid for inclusion, placement or a grade, and neither reviewed this page before it published. Everything on it comes from public material on the dates shown. How the index grades.
Neither vendor publishes the document that would settle most of this. Questel's commitments on training, retention and model providers sit on a Trusted AI page rather than in an agreement. Its Master Services Agreement and data processing addendum are referenced as signed with clients but are not available to read. Anaqua publishes no customer agreement at all, so its only contract is a website Terms of Use scoped by its own text to anaqua.com rather than to the software. On Questel, the models it names include Llama 2 and Falcon, which are generations old, and a 2026 announcement of a proprietary patent search model does not appear on that page. Neither vendor reviewed this page.