A Step Ahead

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The Internet has changed the way we all do business and like any other market sector, IP firms need to make sure they are also able to exploit this new technology. Philippa Edward explains how the latest version of TMDS Direct is helping clients to better manage their watching portfolios.

Convenience and accessibility are everything in today’s business climate, as the office is becoming more and more portable. With hotel rooms wired up to the Internet and a laptop in everyone’s briefcase, it makes sense that management software should evolve to reflect the travelling workplace.

TMDS Direct (the online portfolio management tool from TMDS) has risen to that challenge. Now available to all clients, its facilities allow you to monitor your watching portfolios on-line and review watch notice information in a variety of formats.

Online portfolio management
The home page of TMDS Direct allows clients to view the trademark portfolio currently being watched by TMDS. From this screen clients can add, amend and delete marks as appropriate. Standard Internet capabilities also apply here – marks can be sorted by a number of columns or exported into an Excel spreadsheet for use elsewhere. Attorney clients will be able to see marks sorted by each client under management or indeed choose to view only those marks from a single client – again this can be exported into Excel for easy client portfolio management.

The home page also allows clients to see or add an internal reference to each mark being watched – some clients choose to use this to add an internal billing reference that we can then include in the annual invoice. This makes any yearly internal cross-charging much easier to handle. Any change made to the portfolio online is sent to the Business Administration team via an automated e-mail and a confirmation is returned both on receipt of instructions and when the change is complete. Alterations that are logged online take just 24 hours to appear.

Convenience and accessibility are everything in today's business climate, as the office is becoming more and more portable

Watch notices
With the advent of e-billing, many clients are now moving to a paperless office and we are changing to reflect that. We are now able to deliver watch notices in a variety of electronic formats – by e-mail, by XML feed or via TMDS Direct. Clients will need to contact us in order to state their delivery preference (the default service is paper).

The watch notice delivery via TMDS Direct comes in two formats. Firstly, clients can see the watch notice via a zip file delivery – once the zip file has been opened watch notices will appear as a standard two-page word document on screen. Alternatively, clients can review the content of the watch notice via a tabular format – which will allow for fast, easy review and the selection of possible infringements. For example, the table includes details of the mark found, mark watched, opposition deadline and a thumbnail image of the mark in question. A full two-page watch notice can be generated from this view.

As many clients review watch notices as a team, this tabular view also includes some simple tools to allow teams to understand what actions others in the firm might have taken. It is worth noting that we can batch the watch notices either by attorney or by client; this means that individuals can only choose to view those watch notices that are of interest. In the table watch notice, information will change colour once it has been reviewed (as in your e-mail account), users can leave messages for each other in the memo box and make it clear what action is to be taken with regard to that particular notice.

For more information on TMDS Direct, please e-mail info@tmds.com or phone TMDS on +44 (0)207 549 0660.

This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 14

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