Workflow Stages:
The 4 workflow stages that you in the Idea Manager tab of the TIP tool is as follows:
Idea Capture: First stage is the Idea Capture phase. This is the initial idea capturing stage, where all your ideas are created, saved and published. After publishing, other collaborators can refine the idea form and add more details
Internal Vetting: Once your ideas are added, then comes your vetting stage where evaluation of your ideas happen. You might have an internal process for review within the enterprise, wherein you have discussions with other stakeholders or decide whether or not to pursue filing. The ideas in this stage would fall under Internal Vetting.
Patent Drafting: Once you decide upon applying for a patent application for your idea, one or more of your ideas is moved into a filing for the drafting stage. Here, ideally the prosecutor drafts your patent application and the to and fro communication on draft and its revisions may happen. You can also define the coverage of the idea or ideas being filed in this column. For example, which of the ideas are fully captured, briefly captured or captured in only claims
Filed: Once the application is filed at the PTO, and it has an official patent application number and filing date, you can add those details and move the filing to the ‘Filed’ stage
Workflow Process:
Once your ideas are added into Triangle IP’s Idea Manager tool, the tool offers a simple drag and drop feature to move your ideas across various stages of your workflow.
As explained above, there are 4 stages: Idea Capture, Internal vetting or evaluation, patent drafting stage and the Filed application stage.
To move an idea, you can simply drag an idea from one phase of the workflow to the other.
Once your idea is ready for drafting, move it to the Patent Drafting column to create a filing. If your filing is a combination of 2 or more ideas, simply drop those multiple ideas in the Patent Drafting box, and then click on ‘Create Filing’. You can then update the details of the combination filing, such as Idea number, docket number, title etcetera and click on Create Filing. It will be moved to the Patent Drafting column. In case you don’t provide your own idea number, the system will provide the new draft filing with a system generated idea number.
Once filed, you can move the draft filing from Patent Drafting to Filed column. Simply drag and drop the drafting shell to the Filed column. And enter details such as serial number and filing date, and click on Move. Your filing will be moved.
The ideas can also be moved in a similar manner backwards in a workflow, if there are any updates in the decision of an idea. However, the movement of ideas or filings forward or backwards can be done only by a Manager or a prosecutor, and not by an inventor. This is done to ensure that a person with proper decision making authority is able to move the ideas within the workflow.