Anaqua

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.

This is the incumbent-with-an-AI-layer case, and the layer is real but plainly 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 discrete and separately marketed, and each is an accelerant on a workflow that already existed. Remove all four and a full enterprise IPMS remains, which is the distinction this axis is asking about.

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 described as providing a consistent, high-quality review of any patent, the classifier promises explainable AI insights, and the Adaptable principle commits to maintaining the accuracy and relevance of the AI tools through regular training and refinement. No benchmark, test set, error rate, or named failure mode was located on the AI initiatives page, the guiding principles page or the security page on 31 August 2026. The citator and primary-authority limbs of this axis do not apply, since the product summarises and classifies patent documents rather than citing legal authority. The applicable risk is a wrong summary or misclassification feeding a portfolio decision, and nothing published addresses how often that happens. The linked AcclaimIP article describing the summaries feature was not opened this session.

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 was located.

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 unusually 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 centres; 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. What is missing is any figure for what changed: the quotes describe satisfaction and scale rather than a measured outcome, none carries a date, and several identify the speaker's former role. The client stories library and client reviews page were not opened this session.

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 integrated with HR systems so access is revoked 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 each client operates in an environment where no AI-driven insights or data are shared between unintended recipients. But nothing located states whether client IP data is used to train or refine Anaqua's models, which is the question a patent department asks first, and the Adaptable principle's reference to regular training and refinement of the AI tools makes the silence more pointed rather than less. Privilege and work product are never mentioned, no retention or deletion position is published for portfolio content as distinct from personal data, and there is no customer agreement on the site in which any of this could be read as a commitment.

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.

Nothing published addresses the advice line for the product. The website Terms of Use of 19 May 2025 does say the materials do not constitute legal advice, but that document is scoped by its own opening to the anaqua.com website and governs visitors rather than AQX users, so it does not reach the software. Searched the home page, the AQX Corporate and Law Firm entries, the AI initiatives page, the guiding AI principles page, the security and hosting page, the privacy policy and the Terms of Use on 31 August 2026: 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 was located. This matters on a platform sold to law firms whose docketing output is a computed filing deadline. Not every AQX Law Firm sub-page was opened, so the absence is recorded against the surfaces named.

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.

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 minimisation, 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.

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 from 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 record-level access control. The privacy policy of October 2023 sets a retention position tied to the customer relationship plus a reasonable period afterwards, notes that anonymised data may be kept indefinitely, confirms Anaqua's role as processor with the customer as controller, 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 a postal address and email. The California policy adds a commitment to notify affected parties and regulators of a suspected breach where legally required. The gap this band names is present: no subprocessor list is published anywhere. Retention and deletion are also framed entirely around personal data, with nothing stating what happens to portfolio documents or AI inputs after processing.

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 property. The only contract published is the website Terms and Conditions of Use, which states in its own opening that it governs use and access of the website at www.anaqua.com, and whose disclaimer and liability clauses are correspondingly about the materials on that site rather than about AQX. Searched the footer, the security and hosting page, the AQX Corporate and Law Firm entries, the privacy policy and the resource library on 31 August 2026: no master subscription agreement, service agreement, indemnity, liability cap, warranty on output or insurance position covering the software was located. A buyer cannot learn who bears the loss if the classifier misfiles a patent or auto-processing mishandles an office action until they are inside a negotiation.

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 was not located 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.

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.

This is the most complete deployment disclosure located in the pull so far. The security and hosting page states single-tenant hosting, defined as a single dedicated instance of the application deployed for each customer, on Microsoft Azure, with data location options in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and India. It also describes a second deployment tier and what changes in it: AnaquaGov runs AQX in the Azure Government environment, restricts access to US citizens, residents and legal 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. The limb that keeps it here is the one this band reserves for the top: residency is offered without processing location being addressed separately from storage, and in particular nothing states where the AI features process data, which matters when one of them runs on a Microsoft AI service.

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 Type 2 SOC 2 examination of Anaqua's information security management system supporting infrastructure and services, which is more scope detail than most of this corpus gives. Anaqua's own press releases name the auditor, Schellman & Company, for both the SOC 2 examination and the 2017 ISO 27001 certification, and name Schellman again as the C3PAO that assessed the AnaquaGov enclave against NIST SP 800-171; ISO 9001 is also claimed. What is missing is access and currency. There is no trust portal, no report request route, and no examination period or certificate date on any current page, so a buyer reading in 2026 can see which standards are claimed but cannot confirm the attestation is live or obtain it without a sales conversation.

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 identified 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, which is a real disclosure. For the other three capabilities, the AI patent classifier, the generative AI Patent Summaries, and WiseTime's AI Narrative, no model, model family, provider or version is named anywhere located on 31 August 2026, and no commitment to notify customers when any of that changes was found. The Azure hosting relationship is described in detail but that is infrastructure and it is credited on the deployment row rather than here, since 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.

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. Checked the home page, the AQX Corporate, AQX Law Firm and PATTSY WAVE entries, the services pages, the security and hosting page and the site footer on 31 August 2026. 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.

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 real substance and separate products behind it. Anaqua sells AQX Corporate to in-house IP departments, AQX Law Firm to firms, AQX Pharma as a vertical edition, PATTSY WAVE for docketing-led buyers, and AnaquaGov to US government contractors handling controlled unclassified information, which is an unusually explicit fifth segment. The client roster demonstrates both main segments, running from adidas, TSMC, GSK and BASF on the corporate side to Thompson Coburn, Michael Best and Conley Rose on the firm side. Practice coverage spans patents, trademarks, domain names, innovation and partnership management, with analytics and annuity services alongside. The boundary is what is missing: no statement of firm size, portfolio size, or the practice areas or jurisdictions where the product is not the right fit was located.