P

Patentcloud

The models are the engine of core capabilities layered on a product that would still function without them. What would survive their removal is substantial: a curated global patent database, Patent Search as a Boolean and bibliographic research tool, and Patent Vault as a portfolio management and collaboration workspace holding up to 100,000 patents with folders, projects and up to twenty collaborators. Those are database and workflow products in their own right.

What the models power on top is real and named rather than decorative: Semantic Prior Art, described as running on the vendor's own machine learning to predict relationships between a patent and potential prior art and return ranked references across six jurisdictions; a generative AI Patent Summary that condenses each reference and highlights terms aligning with the claims of the patent at issue, shipped into Due Diligence in June 2023, Quality Insights in October 2023 and Patent Vault in February 2024; Design Search, which matches design patents from an uploaded image; and auto-generated prior art references with a calculated claim disclosure rate in Quality Insights.

A is unavailable because the platform is sold as six separately purchasable applications and several of them are not model-dependent, so a buyer can hold a working product with the models subtracted. The vendor's own framing supports the reading, positioning the offering as high-quality patent data first and analytics over it second. Checked 8 September 2026.

Grounding is real, documented and openable, with a defined relevance threshold, short of the A band on the limb that asks for failure modes to be named. Every output the buyer acts on is a patent document the reader can open and check: Semantic Prior Art returns up to 300 US, European, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and WIPO references, Quality Insights surfaces file wrappers and supports claim construction, and Prior Art Analytics compares references against the claims of the patent at issue and calculates the proportion of claim elements previously disclosed.

The retrieval method is described in part rather than merely asserted, and the threshold is unusually specific: references are ranked by relevance and starred where semantic similarity exceeds the overall average similarity between all patents and their family members and section 102 prior art, which is a stated and non-arbitrary line rather than a vendor adjective. Figures exist and were weighed. A model-upgrade post publishes a before-and-after classification measurement on named portfolios, reporting a pairing success rate for novelty prior art rising from 77 to 86 per cent with the error rate reduced by 40 per cent, and marketing claims prior art search time cut by over 50 per cent.

Those were not counted toward A because they measure an internal classification improvement on two third-party portfolios rather than the accuracy of the product's output, and because the A band also requires the failure modes to be named and nothing on the estate names any. What the agreement says instead runs the other way and is recorded here: clause 11 disclaims liability for errors or omissions and states that the client assumes that risk. Checked 8 September 2026.

Oversight is asserted, and the assertion takes the form of assigning the risk to the customer rather than describing a control. Clause 11 of the Terms of Use states that no legal advice is intended or offered, that the vendor disclaims any and all liability related to any decision taken in reliance on the content, and that the client acknowledges it assumes the risk of possible errors or omissions. That tells a buyer where responsibility sits and nothing about how the system is supervised.

No published material describes what the system does unaided, what constrains it, what review surface a professional works through, or what route an output takes back to human judgement, and no mode or setting is documented. One real control exists and is graded here rather than ignored: the starred relevance threshold on Semantic Prior Art tells a reviewer which references exceed average semantic similarity, which is a disclosed signal a professional can act on.

It is a single indicator rather than a control structure. The product class softens the question without removing it, and that is said plainly: this platform retrieves, ranks and summarises patent documents for a professional to assess rather than drafting or acting on a matter, so the D band's premise of a system that drafts, advises or acts does not describe it and D would overstate the gap. B is unavailable because no written commitment describes the models working alongside a supervising professional with real review surfaces. Checked 8 September 2026.

Results are quoted with the analysis subject named but the customer never is, which is the C band's second limb. The published figures are concrete and traceable to worked examples: a model-upgrade post reports the pairing success rate for novelty prior art on an Nvidia portfolio improving from 77 to 86 per cent with a 40 per cent reduction in the error rate, and works through a second example on a Masimo portfolio, while marketing claims prior art search time cut by over 50 per cent.

Those examples name the portfolios analysed, not customers who deployed the product, so they evidence the tool working on public patent data rather than production use by a buyer. The About page adds a scale claim of more than 440,000 patents handled over 35 years, which is leadership experience rather than deployment evidence. A retrieval limit belongs on this row and is not graded against the vendor: the product and customer pages at the vendor's own domain are robots-refused to the fetcher on both www and non-www forms, and no first-party named customer, case study or attributed testimonial was recovered through the search index across several queries.

A software-directory listing names two large manufacturers as customers; that is an aggregator source, excluded outright as evidence of anything, and is recorded only so a later reader knows it was seen and refused rather than missed. If a customer page exists behind the refusal, this row is the one to revisit. Checked 8 September 2026.

Confidentiality is asserted in general terms, and the one confidentiality article in the agreement does not cover the customer's work. Section 9 of the Terms of Use binds both parties to hold confidential the contents, terms and all information related to the Agreement, for ten years after termination. That protects the deal, not the client's matter material. Nothing in the Terms commits InQuartik to hold in confidence the searches a client runs, the portfolios it assembles, the notes it takes or the reports it generates.

What is published elsewhere is a security posture rather than a confidentiality commitment: ISO 27001 certification with a named scope, and a statement of commitment to protecting information disclosure, both of which are graded on Security Certifications where they answer the question directly. Two clauses run the other way and belong on this row for a buyer whose search strategy is itself privileged work product. Clause 3.2 records that the vendor collects information on the client's searches and browsing history, the notes the client made and other platform activity; clause 3.11 adds the terms, phrases and choices made while searching; and clause 3.4 reserves the right to analyse and compile statistics from information collected in order to improve existing services and develop new services.

Privilege and work product are addressed nowhere, which under R33 forecloses A independently. No position is stated on what any model provider may retain, none being named. Checked 8 September 2026.

A real position on advice versus tooling is published, and it sits in the customer agreement rather than in a website footer, which is what separates this from the C band's boilerplate-in-the-terms pattern. Clause 11 of the Terms of Use states in terms that no legal advice is intended or offered by InQuartik in making any of the content available, and that the vendor disclaims all liability related to any decision taken by any party in reliance upon the content.

The surrounding sentence adds that the client assumes the risk of possible errors or omissions, so the allocation is explicit rather than implied. The audience is not left ambiguous, which removes the other route to C: the vendor addresses IP professionals, attorneys, patent counsel, brokers and analysts by name, and clause 5.5 contemplates institutional subscriptions for law firms, corporations and government entities, so this is a professional tool sold to professionals rather than a consumer-facing product.

Two A limbs fail. Nothing addresses how the product supports a practitioner's competence or supervision duties, and no jurisdiction limit is named anywhere despite a database spanning six patent jurisdictions and a product whose validity analysis is US-specific. Checked 8 September 2026.

No governance position is published for a system whose output informs patent validity and freedom-to-operate decisions. Nothing identifies who inside the vendor is accountable for the models, no pre-release testing regime is described as governance, no policy or principles statement exists, no certification such as ISO 42001 is claimed, and nothing addresses uneven output across jurisdictions, technology fields, filing languages or portfolio sizes, which is where bias would actually bite on a patent analytics product.

The C band was tested and does not fit, because C describes responsible AI principles published without a mechanism and no principles are published at all. One item was considered and rejected under the no-double-spend rule. A model-upgrade post does publish a before-and-after evaluation of classification performance on two named portfolios, which is genuine measurement disclosure; it is spent on Citation Accuracy, where it answers the question the band asks, and it is not a governance framework, an accountability structure or a testing regime that a buyer could audit.

The ISO 27001 certification covers information security management and is spent on Security Certifications. The grade records what is locatable on this axis as of the date rather than asserting the vendor has no internal practice. Checked 8 September 2026.

A privacy policy and a set of personal-data rights cover the product without addressing what happens to the work itself after processing. What is published and real: clause 3.7 gives the client the right to request export, update, correction or deletion of personal information and to require the vendor to stop collecting, processing and using it, with a commitment to comply in a timely manner; clause 3.8 commits to systematic deletion of identity documents once identity is confirmed; clause 3.5 addresses onward transfer to third-party processors with a requirement that they comply with data protection regulation; and clause 3.6 acknowledges cross-border transfer with security safeguards.

Access control and infrastructure protection sit inside the ISO 27001 scope. What is absent is the substance this axis asks about for a product that ingests professional work. No retention period is stated anywhere for searches, notes, projects or generated reports, and clause 3.1 states instead that the vendor may at all times receive and store such information. Nothing describes what happens to a client's Patent Vault projects on termination; clause 9.4 addresses return or destruction of confidential information, which section 9 defines as the agreement's own terms.

No subprocessor is named, clause 3.5 referring only to trusted third-party processors and service providers. No incident or breach notification practice was located on any surface. B is unavailable because two of the elements it names, a subprocessor list and a stated incident practice, are both missing rather than one. Checked 8 September 2026.

Liability is addressed only through disclaimer, and the indemnity runs one way. Clause 11 disclaims liability for errors or omissions throughout the services, states that the client assumes that risk as a subscriber, and disclaims all liability related to any decision taken by any party in reliance upon the content; it further disclaims liability for interruptions and third-party infrastructure failures. Clause 15 is the only indemnification article and it obliges the client to indemnify, defend and hold harmless InQuartik across five heads including breach, third-party IP claims arising from client submissions, and the client's activities in connection with the database and reports.

There is no vendor indemnity of any kind. The warranties at clause 10.1 are corporate rather than performance warranties: that the services contain no libelous matter, that the vendor operates lawfully and holds necessary permits, and that it has capacity to contract. Nothing warrants the accuracy, completeness or fitness of the analysis. No insurance is referenced. One retrieval limit belongs on this row and is not graded against the vendor: section 12 is headed Limitation of Liability, Cap and Force Majeure and the page runs from that heading directly to clause 12.4, a force-majeure notice provision, so the limitation and cap text at 12.1 to 12.3 did not render and was not read.

The grade rests on what is published rather than on the missing clauses. D was tested and does not fit, because the allocation of loss is stated rather than absent; it is simply stated against the buyer. Checked 8 September 2026.

No integration into practice systems was located, and the vendor's own positioning is that none is needed. The bundle FAQ states that the plans allow a team to work on the Patentcloud platform without needing to introduce additional third-party tools, which is a claim of self-sufficiency rather than of interoperability. No docketing system, document management system, IP management platform or patent office filing interface is named anywhere as a connection, no API is documented or referenced, and no integrations page was recovered.

What does exist is export and sharing inside the platform's own boundary: PatentMatrix dashboards and Due Diligence and Quality Insights reports can be shared with colleagues and partners, and the KEEP function saves findings into a Patent Vault project for team members. Those move work between the vendor's own applications and between its own users, not into the systems a firm already runs. A retrieval limit is recorded and did not drive the grade: the product pages are robots-refused to the fetcher, so an integrations page could exist behind the refusal.

The grade rests on located material rather than on the refusal, because the vendor's published account of its bundles positively asserts that third-party tools are unnecessary, which is affirmative evidence rather than silence. Checked 8 September 2026.

The deployment model is stated clearly with partial residency detail, which is the B band. Published: the platform runs on a hybrid cloud infrastructure, and the locations are named rather than left as a cloud gesture, comprising Amazon Web Services data centres in Oregon and Tokyo together with Taiwan Mobile data centres in Taipei. The vendor states the AWS facilities are themselves certified to ISO 27001, PCI DSS Service Provider Level 1 and SOC 2, and that the Taipei facilities carry Tier III certification in design, facility and operations.

Physical and environmental security sits inside the ISO 27001 scope. Three named locations across two continents is more residency detail than most records in this lane publish. Three limbs are missing and each matters to a buyer with client obligations. No tenancy model is stated anywhere, so whether the deployment is single or multi-tenant and how customer separation is achieved cannot be established. Processing location is not distinguished from storage location, so a buyer cannot tell which of the three sites analysis runs in.

And no region choice is offered or described, the geography being disclosed as the vendor's architecture rather than as a customer election, with clause 3.6 confirming that information collected in one jurisdiction may be transferred to servers in another under unspecified safeguards. Checked 8 September 2026.

Independent attestation with a named scope, reachable without a sales call, on a dedicated trust surface. The vendor publishes a Trust and Security page stating that InQuartik is ISO 27001 certified and setting out the scope of the certification with unusual specificity: all six Patentcloud applications enumerated individually, Quality Insights, Due Diligence, SEP OmniLytics, Patent Search, Design Search and Patent Vault, together with internal systems spanning development, maintenance, physical security, and the management of application systems, data protection systems and network communications.

The certificate itself is offered for direct download rather than through an account executive or an NDA gate, which under R5 is the self-serve tier and reaches the top band. The page also names the hosting estate and the certifications held by those facilities. Two limits are named because they are real and because the grade should be read with them. The certificate was not opened: the trust page path is robots-refused to the fetcher on both URL forms and its body was recovered through the search index, so the auditor and the certificate's validity dates are not established, and the most recent certification announcement located is a second-year renewal rather than a current-year confirmation.

Grading down on that basis would convert a fetcher constraint into a finding against the vendor, which rule 6.6 forbids, so the grade records what the vendor's own text establishes and this note carries what it does not. No SOC 2 report of the vendor's own is claimed; the SOC 2 reference belongs to AWS and is infrastructure. Checked 8 September 2026.

The vendor refers to its models as proprietary and identifies nothing underneath them, which is the C band exactly. Semantic Prior Art is described as powered by Patentcloud's machine learning technology, which is a claim of ownership rather than an identification; the Patent Summary feature is described as generative AI without naming a model, a provider or an architecture; and a model upgrade is discussed in terms of classification performance without saying what was upgraded.

No foundation model is named anywhere, no model provider is named, and nothing states whether the generative component is built in-house or supplied by a third party, which is the single question a buyer would ask of a feature that sends patent text to a model. The Terms of Use are silent on the point across their whole length. Amazon Web Services and Taiwan Mobile are named, and both are spent on infrastructure: under R29 test 1 naming a cloud host says where a model runs rather than whose model it is, and the same fact cannot also answer this axis.

D was tested and does not fit, because the vendor does disclose that machine learning and generative AI sit behind named features and characterises the machine learning as its own; what it withholds is everything below that. Change notification is not reached, nothing being named that a change could be notified about. Checked 8 September 2026.

The unit and the structure are published in real depth and the figures did not resolve, which is the B band's second limb. Published: five named bundle plans, Premium, Patent Due Diligence, Patent Portfolio Analysis, Patent Litigation and Freedom to Operate, each built around a stated patent scenario and each with a feature comparison table setting out precisely what it includes and excludes; separate standalone pricing pages for the individual products; the unit of charge stated as one account per plan with additional seats available on request; quantified entitlements including a 100,000-patent storage limit, up to 1,000 customisable folders and up to twenty collaborators; a stated bundle discount of up to 79 per cent against standalone subscription; monthly and annual billing cycles with automatic credit card billing at the start of each cycle; accepted payment methods; a published switch-and-cancel policy operating from the next billing cycle; and free trials including seven-day trials and two free validity analysis reports.

Custom bundles and additional seats are withheld to a sales conversation, which is the enterprise-tier withholding the band contemplates. Two things are named rather than glossed. The plan figures render client-side and returned empty cells on fetch, so no rate was established first-party, and that is a retrieval limit under R85 rather than a finding that no figure is published. And a software-directory listing publishes four annual figures; it is an aggregator, excluded as evidence, nothing here is graded on it, and it is named only so a later reader knows it was seen and refused. Checked 8 September 2026.

Segment and practice coverage is described with real substance, with the boundaries left open. The buyer segments are named individually rather than gestured at: IP professionals, attorneys, dealers, brokers, scientists, engineers, financiers and designers, and clause 5.5 of the Terms contemplates institutional subscriptions for law firms, corporations and business, charitable or government entities. Practice coverage is unusually concrete because the five bundle plans are themselves named practice scenarios, each mapped to the work it supports: due diligence before a buying or licensing decision, portfolio analysis at any scale, litigation response where the task is finding weaknesses in the patent at issue, freedom to operate where the task is clearing products in target markets, and an all-scenario enterprise plan.

Standard-essential patent work is served by a dedicated application, with 5G and 6G claim charting and FRAND issues named specifically, and design patent clearance by another. Jurisdictional coverage is stated where it is testable, with US, European, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and WIPO documents named as the semantic prior art scope. A is unavailable because the limits are not stated: nothing says which jurisdictions are outside coverage, and the validity and file wrapper analysis in Quality Insights is described against US patents without a statement of what is unavailable elsewhere. Checked 8 September 2026.