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Anaqua

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.