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Ankar

The models are the product throughout, with no conventional software beneath them. Ankar calls itself AI native, and every module is a generative or machine learning capability: drafting against a learned style guide, patentability analysis over more than 150 million patents and publications, office action responses, claim charts, small molecule and sequence analysis, and infringement detection that breaks down claims and returns product level matches.

The underlying data is public patent and publication material, not a licensed content asset, so removing the models would leave a searchable bibliographic database rather than a product a firm would buy. The vendor describes the platform as an operating system for patents, spanning generation, prosecution and protection.

Grounding is real, documented and sold as a named feature: Traceable Citations is one of the listed modules. Prior art comes with structured context explaining why a reference matters, how it compares and what to do next, and the vendor says the tools are not a black box, offering transparent reasoning with adjustable criteria. Infringement results carry visual evidence, source links and technical context. The risk of error is disclosed in the agreement.

Clause 7.2 says outputs may contain inaccuracies and omissions and that the legal status of generated output is uncertain, and requires the customer to review, validate and approve all output before filing or submitting it. No accuracy figure, benchmark, evaluation or test set is published, so a buyer gets a described method and a candid warning without a number to test either against.

The oversight model is documented in three places that reinforce each other. In the contract, clause 7.2 makes the customer solely responsible for reviewing, validating and approving all output before using, filing, submitting or relying on it. It names the work it covers: patent applications, office action responses, litigation, prosecution strategy, legal analysis and client advice. The same clause says Ankar does not file, prosecute, maintain or monitor intellectual property rights and is not responsible for filing deadlines, prosecution decisions or legal positions.

In the product, every output can be edited, suggestions never overwrite, and a user can revise or override at any time. The thresholds belong to the user: the infringement module lets an IP team set similarity criteria, technical focus and number of results, and the prior art engine offers adjustable criteria. Nothing in the platform is described as acting unattended.

Three customers are named with described outcomes, and two have quotes from named executives. Valeo, described as one of the world's top patent filers, worked with Ankar to modernize drafting by automating formatting and matching output to internal templates, and Murielle Khairallah, VP Intellectual Property, is quoted. Nexans used the infringement module to isolate 30 highly specific product level matches after years of generic tools, and Boris Welzer, Director IP, is quoted saying he had sought such a tool for fifteen years.

Motorway UK is named for patentability review during a surge in disclosures. Published figures include a 40 to 60 percent cut in time spent on drafting and office actions and over 90 percent adoption of the prosecution tools after trial. Vorys and L'Oreal are named elsewhere in company material. The percentage figures have no measurement basis, sample or date, and none is tied to a named customer. A case studies page exists and was not opened.

Most of the confidentiality questions are answered, and privilege is not. Clause 2.3 of the terms bars Ankar from using customer content to train, retrain, fine tune or otherwise improve any AI model or to develop products or services, and extends the bar to third parties Ankar might authorize. Clause 2.2 says the customer keeps all rights in inputs and owns all outputs, with Ankar assigning any rights it might gain by law.

Clause 2.1 treats customer content as confidential by default, with no marking needed, and clause 5.2 allows disclosure only to staff and subcontractors bound by equal written duties. Deletion follows a thirty day retrieval window, and the data processing addendum adds deletion at the customer's choice with a certificate on request. Isolation is available in its strongest form through deployment in the customer's own private cloud.

Neither privilege nor work product is named anywhere, although the product handles unfiled invention disclosures and prosecution strategy.

Clause 7.2 of the terms sets out a full professional responsibility position in the operative agreement. It says what the product is and is not: outputs may contain inaccuracies and omissions, the customer should not rely on them for advice of any kind, including legal advice, and output is no substitute for advice from a qualified professional. It sets the supervision duty and names the work it covers. The customer is solely responsible for reviewing, validating and approving all output before using, filing or relying on it in any patent application, office action response, litigation, prosecution strategy, legal analysis or client advice.

It marks the limit of the vendor's role: Ankar does not file, prosecute, maintain or monitor intellectual property rights and is not responsible for filing deadlines, prosecution decisions, legal positions or the customer's professional obligations. It also warns that the legal status of generated output is uncertain and that output may not attract intellectual property protection. No bar or patent office guidance is named.

A design philosophy is published, and no mechanism stands behind it. Across its blog and product material the company says tools should empower experts rather than replace them, and that reasoning should be transparent and criteria adjustable by the professional. It adds that speed is worthless if a practitioner cannot stand behind the output. The product reflects this through suggestions that never overwrite and thresholds the user sets.

No responsible AI page or governance framework exists, and no person or function is named as accountable for model behavior. Nothing describes what is evaluated before a model or module change ships, and there is no ISO 42001 or equivalent. The trust center's 106 controls and ISO 27001 concern information security, not AI governance. Nothing addresses uneven output, which matters on a platform with separate small molecule and sequence modules where performance across technical fields is the open question.

Most elements are strong, and one has a specific, documented gap. Retention and deletion are precise: a thirty day retrieval window after termination under clause 9.6, then destruction, and under the data processing addendum deletion or return at the customer's choice, with backups cleared on the normal cycle and a deletion certificate on request. Incident notice is without undue delay and where feasible within seventy two hours, with five listed items of content, including categories and approximate numbers of records affected.

Access control is contractual as well as technical. Accounts are per user and may not be shared, customers must report suspected unauthorized access, and clause 9.2 binds Ankar to the safeguards in its SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001 certification. Subprocessor terms are strong: ten days' prior written notice of any change, a right to object, similar written obligations, and Ankar liable for their performance. The gap is the list itself.

Clause 6(a) says current subprocessors are in Schedule 2, but the published addendum ends after Schedule 1, so none is named. AWS appears in the transfers clause, which identifies the infrastructure but not the AI providers.

The allocation of loss is published in full, tiered and mutual. Clause 7.3 caps each party's total liability at the amounts paid in the twelve months before the first event giving rise to it. It sets a separate cap of twice that figure for breach of confidentiality, breach of the security commitment, or claims under the data processing addendum, the failures that would matter most to a firm handing over unfiled inventions.

Gross negligence, fraud, willful misconduct, the indemnities and material breach of the acceptable use policy sit outside the caps. Indirect and consequential damages are excluded for both sides. Clause 8.2 has Ankar defend third party claims that its own intellectual property infringes, with remedies to procure, replace or modify, or terminate with a prorated refund. Clause 6.2 warrants that the services will work substantially as documented, with termination and a prorated refund if a problem is not fixed within thirty days.

Any warranty on output is expressly disclaimed in 7.1 and 7.2, no insurance position is published, and beta services and free trials are excluded from the indemnity.

One integration is named and real, and the rest is contractual scaffolding without content. Ankar has published a redesigned editing experience for native Microsoft Word compatibility, which matters on this product because patent drafting happens in Word and a tool that cannot round-trip a specification is a tool a drafter leaves. Clause 1.6 of the terms contemplates third-party integrations that a customer connects by linking authorized user accounts, and describes the risk allocation for them, but names not one such integration and states they are optional.

Beyond that nothing is published: no IP management or docketing system is named, no document management system, no patent office filing interface, no connector list and no API or developer documentation. For a platform selling across the full patent lifecycle, the absence of any named link to the docketing and IP management systems a firm already runs is the gap, and a contract clause anticipating integrations is not the same as a documented one.

Two deployment models are defined in the agreement, and the customer chooses and names the region. Under clause 9, hosted delivery processes and stores customer content only in the hosting location on the order form. The data processing addendum makes this concrete. The customer picks the region at onboarding: UK and EU customers are stored and processed in UK and EU AWS regions, with Paris and London given as examples, and US customers in US AWS regions.

Clause 10 sets out the alternative of running the platform inside the customer's own private cloud. It covers the number of installations, deployment help and the customer's responsibility for its environment. It also sets minimum requirements for GPUs, runtime libraries, container orchestration, networking and identity management, timely updates, and a signed officer attestation of deletion within thirty days of termination.

Clause 10.3 says plainly that local deployment may limit Ankar's ability to maintain and support the platform, and narrows the functionality warranty to match.

Two standards are named on an open trust page, and the evidence behind them is not published. The trust center at trust.ankar.ai, hosted by Bastion, needs no login. It shows ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type 2 by name, 106 controls across business operations, human resources, cloud security and application security, four documents, and a timestamp refreshed daily. Penetration testing appears among the controls. Security is also contractual: clause 9.2 of the terms makes the security commitments an obligation whose breach triggers the higher liability cap.

No auditor or certifying body is named for either standard, no report period, issue or expiry date is published, and no scope statement says which services are covered. A control count and daily timestamp show a live compliance program, not an audit opinion a reader can weigh. Whether the four documents download freely or need a request was not tested.

The architecture is described and the models behind it are not identified at all. What a reader can establish is the shape of the deployment: hosted service on AWS with the region selected by the customer, or the platform installed and operated inside the customer's own virtual private cloud, with the virtual private cloud clause naming GPU architectures, runtime libraries and container orchestration among the dependencies a customer must provision, which tells a technical reader that inference runs on infrastructure the customer controls under that option.

Clause 2.3 of the terms acknowledges third-party involvement obliquely by extending the training prohibition to third parties Ankar might authorize, which confirms that external providers exist without saying who they are. Beyond that, nothing. No model is named, no version, no provider entity, no default, and no statement of what any provider may retain. The subprocessor list that would ordinarily carry it is promised at Schedule 2 of the data processing addendum and does not appear in the published document.

No commitment to notify customers of a model change is published, though the ten day subprocessor change notice would catch a change of provider.

The unit and structure of charging are published in detail in the terms, and no figure appears. Charging is per seat. Clause 1.2 ties user accounts to the seats on the order form, and clause 3.3 bills added seats immediately and prorated, with reductions taking effect at the next invoice and no refund for the current period. Fees are invoiced annually in advance, due within thirty days, with late payment at 1.5 percent a month.

Clause 3.4 caps any renewal increase at the lesser of five percent or the rise in the UK Consumer Prices Index over the previous twelve months, with at least thirty days' notice, a term that favors the buyer. Clause 9.4 allows heavy cloud usage relative to spend to trigger a pass through of hosting costs, but only after ten days' written notice and a good faith discussion. Free trials exist under clause 4.4. There is no price, tier or pricing page; the only commercial route is Book a demo, and the currency is set on the order form.

The buyer split is built into the site. Modules are divided between patent professionals, who get drafting, office action responses, claim charts, traceable citations and guidelines and case law, and R&D professionals, who get invention disclosure and research intelligence. The product is therefore sold both to the law firm or IP department and to the innovation team upstream, and named customers range from the global law firm Vorys to corporate IP teams at Valeo, Nexans and L'Oreal.

Technical coverage is stated precisely through dedicated small molecule and sequence analysis modules, which name chemistry and biotechnology as supported fields. No patent office or jurisdiction is named, so nothing says whether the drafting and office action modules are built for USPTO practice, EPO practice or both, the first question a prosecution team would ask. No firm size range is given, and nothing says where the product stops.