How TOPPAN Digital IP is reimagining the future of patent filing

Since its official launch in January 2025, the team at TOPPAN Digital IP have been busy talking to the industry about their innovative digital platform, STREAM IP, and their vision for the future of patent filing and intellectual property (IP) solutions. As a precursor to a series of expert panel events on the topic, Austyn Hardy, the company’s vice president, sales and marketing, expands on the vision below under the following core principles:

• Integrated;

• Intelligent;

• Transparent;

• Secure; and

• Intuitive.

There are several IP- and patent-specific digital filing platforms in the market today that were genuinely innovative when first released. Over time, most have been acquired by larger companies. This has stalled development and concentrated the number of vendors. It also made these once innovative tools difficult to integrate. Often, legacy technologies offer overlapping or competing functionality, making existing users reluctant to consolidate. Currently there are well-established companies promoting end-to-end services that cover the full IP life cycle, but they are delivering them on disjointed systems built on outdated technology. Many users find themselves needing to maintain multiple accounts across multiple systems to manage their workflows.

Our vision is for systems and services to be integrated end-to-end as well as with customer systems, delivering a seamless experience for customers whether they are buying translation products, filing services, or renewals.

Data and analytics are critical to making informed decisions. There is a vast amount of data available to the IP industry, but it requires careful handling to be exploited intelligently. Patent data can be expertly used to inform decisions on the competitive landscape and a company’s freedom-to-operate in a specific technology area. However, too often this data exists in a silo. This makes it difficult to access, and time and resource intensive to analyse. We operate in a fast-paced industry and IP professionals need portfolio insights on the fly with reports that are dynamic and configurable, not static and based on old data.

At TOPPAN Digital IP, we will put real-time data in the hands of customers as they manage their patent portfolio. STREAM IP has been designed to provide an intelligent platform experience to users, providing clear insights and predictive information.

The patent translation and filing market remains fragmented and complex. There are a handful of large vendors competing with an array of smaller providers, as well as the reciprocity models of patent attorney firms working on behalf of their patent-holding clients. The shift towards centralisation continues, but typically with pricing models and quality assurance metrics that lack transparency and make it difficult to quantify value. Too often providers hide behind legacy fee agreements with obscure peripheral charges. Buyers can also be faced with unquantifiable cost savings offered through the use of black-box translation technology tools.

Our intention is to break that trend and set a new standard for being transparent in the industry by combining responsive customer service with clear, value-led pricing.

Digital workflow management tools have become standard in the IP industry over the last 15 years. Those on the market today are passive rather than proactive, requiring the user to pre-empt each action that needs to be taken to manage their workflows effectively. This leaves room for human error and doesn’t maximise the time-saving and cost benefits that should be achievable. Technologies available in the market today are often simply data and file sharing tools built on static data environments, dressed up as something more dynamic.

STREAM IP is an intuitive, event-driven digital platform that is easy to use and keeps users informed. It is built on live data, which gives users real-time access to information about their portfolio, prompting next actions to make portfolio management more efficient.

Too many IP service providers have been unable to combine the need for genuine patent expertise and customer excellence with a managed approach to the latest developments in AI. There are large, generalist companies with offerings in the IP space that have deployed AI effectively in some areas. However, they haven’t yet found the sweet spot for patent translation and filing. There are other smaller, specialist companies with interesting technologies. However, those technologies haven’t yet been integrated into a robust and reliable workflow management tool backed up by the requisite operational expertise. There is essentially a big gap in the market.

Our vision is to set the benchmark for secure management of AI, ensuring confidentiality every step of the way. At TOPPAN Digital IP, we will make AI an asset that customers can truly derive value from.

If you are interested in finding out more about STREAM IP and TOPPAN Digital IP, visit toppandigital-ip.com or email TDIP@toppandigital.com.