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IPRally

The machine learning is what the buyer pays for. IPRally's proprietary Graph AI, described as trained on millions of patent examiner citations, runs the search: a user enters a plain text description, a publication number, an image or a hand drawn search graph, and the model returns ranked prior art without Boolean construction. The company says this replaces query building rather than speeding it up, and the Agent page argues that generic large language models cannot search the patent index and that an agent is only as good as the search technology underneath.

Without the models, what remains is a full text patent database with the Boolean search and filters IPRally offers as a secondary option, which is not what anyone buys.

Grounding is documented and inspectable, and measurement stops short of a test an outsider could run. The Agent page says every search case can be opened, reasoning and citations are given per feature, and every claim assessment, feature mapping and relevance score traces to a source document in IPRally's patent index. The retrieval method is described: semantic search over graph representations, patent families, and following examiner citations outward from the strongest documents.

One figure is published, a 14 percent improvement in search recall over a full text single search, but the baseline is IPRally's own, no test set is described, and no failure mode is named. The Generative AI Additional Terms of 14 March 2025 disclaim any warranty that outputs are correct and recommend checking them against a primary source. The site gives two corpus sizes, 120 million patents on the pricing page and 130 million on the Agent page. The product retrieves patent documents, not legal authority, so citator checks do not apply.

The control structure is well described, with two gaps. What runs unattended is stated: Agent analyzes an uploaded disclosure, identifies claims and features, searches and builds the feature chart. Where it stops is stated too: Agent verifies its findings with the user before searching, and depth is a user setting, from quick triage to litigation grade digging. Every search case can be opened, reasoning and citations are given per feature, and output hands off into a full IPRally project for a professional to continue, described as designed for professional review, not blind trust.

The Generative AI Additional Terms add that generative features are always marked before use, are enabled by an administrator and can be disabled at any time. Nothing published says what happens after the system is wrong, and no abstention path is described for Ask AI.

One named customer has a figure, with no date or method behind it. The TLB case study names TLB GmbH, the central technology transfer office for universities in Baden-Wurttemberg, quotes Dr Frank Schlotter, Authorized Officer, and reports about a 50 percent cut in time spent on patent searches, linked to Smart search for query preparation and Ask AI during review. The PDF describes the earlier process of extensive keyword planning, manual Boolean queries and another AI tool the team was not satisfied with.

Five more case studies name Unilever, RPX Corporation, Ossur, Metsa Group and Perl IP Consulting, and a testimonial on the Agent page names Josh Walling, Senior Patent Agent at Milwaukee Tool. No case study is dated, and the headline figure is the customer's own estimate of time saved. Only the TLB study was opened; the others may say more.

The commitments a buyer most wants are in the agreement, and segregation is unanswered. The Terms of Service of 5 April 2024 say IPRally will not own user generated content, will not share, distribute or disclose it to any third party, and will use it only to perform the Service, and give the customer the right to delete all of it permanently. The Generative AI Additional Terms require any outside provider not to train on input or output or claim ownership, and say user generated content is never sent outside IPRally's cloud unless the customer approves.

Privilege and work product are not mentioned anywhere read, and nothing addresses separation between users or matters within an account beyond company specific encryption keys and user level feature rights. That may suffice for an in house IP department, but IPRally also sells to law firms, and for them the matter level question is open.

What is published concerns the reliability of AI output, not professional responsibility. The Generative AI Additional Terms make users solely responsible for generated content, tell them to verify it independently, and place the entire risk on them, and the Agent page says Agent searches while the user decides. Nothing says IPRally is not a law firm or does not give legal advice, sets a jurisdiction limit, addresses a practitioner's supervision or competence duties, or engages with ABA Formal Opinion 512, USPTO practitioner guidance or any EPO or national equivalent.

This matters because the Agent page markets a should we file signal to R&D and innovation teams described as needing no patent expertise, putting a patentability assessment in front of nonpractitioners with only a general verification disclaimer.

Principles are published, with no mechanism behind them. The about page states three company values: transparency, defined as clear, explainable AI so a user always knows how decisions are made; simplicity; and reliability. The features page repeats explainability as a product property. That is a principle specific to AI. There is no responsible AI or AI governance page, no ISO 42001 or EU AI Act position, no one named as accountable for model behavior, no testing regime before release, and no evaluation of uneven output for a system that classifies technology and scores relevance. The marking of generative features and the customer's ability to switch them off are covered under oversight.

Retention, deletion, access control, subprocessors and incident practice are all published and specific. The privacy policy, updated 12 December 2025, keeps personal data for at most twelve months plus a normal backup period after the reason for holding it ends. The Terms of Service let the customer permanently delete all user generated content, and the Data Processing Agreement requires deletion or return of personal data on termination.

Access is limited to authorized staff bound by confidentiality, with SSO, optional adaptive multifactor authentication, user level feature rights and company specific encryption keys. DPA Annex B names nine subprocessors, Okta, Google Cloud EMEA, HubSpot, Intercom, Planhat, Mailgun, Zapier, Slack and Pendo, each with address, purpose, processing location and data categories. DPA clause 9 requires breach notice without undue delay and sets out four required contents, alongside a Vulnerability Disclosure Policy last modified 17 February 2026 and a public status page.

Retention is framed around personal data, with no separate period for patent content or AI inputs, and the subprocessor list is dated January 2025.

The allocation of loss is published and readable before signing, and runs entirely against the buyer. The Terms of Service cap liability at the amount paid in the twelve months before the event, and say IPRally is not responsible for damage caused by correct or incorrect data in the Service. The Generative AI Additional Terms provide outputs as is with no warranty of correctness, place the entire risk on the user, and disclaim liability for outside model services and for security failures at third party providers.

The Data Processing Agreement has the same cap but excludes willful misconduct and gross negligence from it. No indemnity runs to the customer, no warranty covers output, and no insurance position is stated. A buyer can read the whole allocation before signing.

The product largely stands alone. What is documented is export rather than integration: custom export to Excel, PDF and Word, sharing of searches, collections and monitoring within the account, optional single sign on, and an unspecified reference to tool interoperability on the features page. No connection to an IP management or docketing system, document management system or patent office filing system was found, and there is no integrations page.

A company blog post dated 23 July 2026 says a new IPRally API has shipped and MCP support is coming; the future half is not evidence today. A help center collection on product news, data coverage and interoperability, with three articles, was not opened and could change this. Checked the home page, features, pricing, the product navigation, the legal hub and the help center collection list.

Residency is answered plainly and tenancy is not. The privacy policy says IPRally's servers are in the European Union, and the subprocessor annex names Google Cloud EMEA Limited of Dublin as the main cloud provider processing in the EU, with a processing location for each of the other eight subprocessors. DPA clause 4 bars transfer of personal data outside the EU or EEA without the customer's prior written authorization and requires standard contractual clauses for any transfer.

The AI question is answered too: the Generative AI Additional Terms separate In-Cloud Services, running inside IPRally's cloud, from External Services reached by API, say core models are hosted by IPRally, and commit that user generated content is not sent outside that environment without customer approval. Nothing says whether the platform is single tenant or multitenant, and the EU is the only location offered.

The certification is real and stated on the home and features pages as ISO 27001 certification of the information security management system. No scope, certificate date or period, or auditor is published on any readable page, so a buyer cannot confirm it is current. A trust center at trust.iprally.com, linked from the home page and footer and hosted on Vanta, returned an empty page frame on every attempt, and a search did not surface its contents. It may say more. On the pages that loaded, a named standard appears without scope, date or a route to the report.

The model supply chain is disclosed in a contract, not a marketing page. The Generative AI Additional Terms of 14 March 2025 name Anthropic PBC and OpenAI LLC as External Services reached by API, and Google LLC as an In-Cloud Service, covering Gemini models and Model Garden models that meet stated requirements, with links to each provider's terms. External Services host models outside IPRally's cloud and In-Cloud Services run within it, and the features page adds that IPRally hosts its core AI models itself.

Every provider must meet minimum requirements: no training on input or output and no ownership claim over either. Providers may be added or removed at IPRally's sole discretion, but the list sits in a published agreement whose changes are posted, with material changes notified by email or at login under the Terms of Service, so customers can see when it changes.

The unit and structure are published without a figure. Two plans are named, Individual for one user and Team for two to unlimited users, so the unit is the seat. A comparison table of about sixty items covers search, Boolean, review, AI assistants, monitoring, collections, collaboration, classification, coverage, security and support, each marked included, optional or coming soon. Paid extras are named: custom taxonomy AI classifiers, AI classification of monitoring results, simplified R&D licenses, SSO and adaptive multifactor authentication.

A three day free trial is self serve. No rate, band, floor or currency appears, the Team plan routes to Contact Sales, and Agent is described as value based and agreed per customer. No volume bands or currencies are given, and nothing says what implementation adds.

Coverage is described in substance, and the outer boundary is left open. Five role pages address the patent searcher, analyst, manager, attorney and head of IP, and the Agent page explains what IP leaders, patent professionals, R&D and innovation teams, and law firms each get. Five use cases are supported: novelty and patentability, invalidity, state of the art, freedom to operate and classification. Coverage is 58 jurisdictions and 120 million or more patents with machine translation.

Customers range from corporate IP departments such as Unilever, Bosch and Nestle to the Danish Patent Office, technology transfer offices such as TLB, and firms such as Perl IP Consulting and Laine IP. Some limits are stated per feature: Agent supports novelty and invalidity, with freedom to operate on the roadmap and Boolean monitoring coming soon. Nothing states limits on team or portfolio size, or that the platform covers patents rather than the wider IP estate.