Using Your Trademark Docketing Software to Increase Revenue How to Monetize Trademark Docketing Software to Improve Your Bottom Line
Alt Legal Team | June 08, 2022
Trademark docketing software is an essential tool for any trademark practitioner. With the trademark prosecution process involving so many deadlines, it’s crucial to keep track of every deadline so that you don’t allow your clients’ valuable IP rights to inadvertently lapse. In fact, malpractice insurance carriers require you to have a docketing system in place.
Once your trademark portfolio reaches a certain size threshold, a sophisticated, and ideally fully-automated trademark docketing system is necessary to docket your trademark filings and other matters. However, specialized software like trademark docketing software can be expensive. Trademark docketing software is highly-sophisticated technology that requires a tremendous amount of effort, knowledge, time, and money to develop. Trademark docketing software vendors naturally must charge reasonable fees to recoup their costs in developing and maintaining the software. Learn more about the costs of trademark docketing software and how trademark docketing software vendors price these systems.
While you might initially think that the cost of your trademark docketing software is simply a cost of doing business, you could actually monetize your trademark docketing software and offset the price of your subscription. When your trademark docketing software is built with advanced features and the best technology, it is certainly possible to increase revenues and potentially even profit from your trademark docketing software. You can not only offset the cost of the software itself, but also bring in significant additional business and profits for your firm.
Trademark Docketing Software that Allows Client Access Can Differentiate Your Firm
When pitching clients in a crowded market, it’s important to distinguish yourself from competitors to attract clients to your firm. A key way to do this is to offer clients real-time, read-only access to their trademark dockets. This allows your clients to access information any time, see the status of their marks, pull their own reports, and answer their own questions.
While providing clients with access to their own trademark dockets sounds like a great way to attract clients, you know the cost is going to be a concern. Many docketing software vendors charge extra fees for each “seat” or “license.” Prices can range from $200 to $1,000 annually for a single read-only “seat” to access the docketing platform. When this cost is applied to multiple clients, your docketing software fees skyrocket, and it can be difficult to recover the cost. However, at Alt Legal, we offer unlimited edit and read-only users, allowing you to provide docket access to anyone who would find it relevant, without having to worry about running up exorbitant fees for your firm.
When you offer clients access to their dockets as a feature of your legal services, it will help you stand out as a technology leader. Clients want to work with firms that are implementing technology to increase efficiencies and collaboration, as well as reduce administrative costs. Additionally, sharing your docketing environment creates a virtual bridge between your firm and the client and promotes collaboration. It’s a great way to stay top-of-mind with clients, since they will be seeing your firm’s name every time they access the docketing system. We’ve even seen some organizations charge a 2% “technology” fee on their invoices to account for these additional value-adds that they provide to clients. That’s an additional $2,000 in revenue for every $100,000 in billings.
Trademark Docketing Software Featuring Trademark Protection Tools Can Bring in Additional Business and Profit
Trademark professionals know that it’s not enough to rely on registration alone to protect a brand. It’s critical to continue to monitor your clients’ registered trademarks to ensure nobody is infringing on their marks. Enforcing your clients’ trademarks helps protect their brands and all the goodwill they’ve worked so hard to establish.
Unfortunately, the market for trademark watch services has very much been all-or-nothing given the cost of trademark monitoring services. Either clients choose to invest in monitoring their marks, or they don’t. This has been a common point of frustration among clients and law firms alike.
Alt Legal Trademark Protection provides a cost-effective solution and is available as an optional add-on service to Alt Legal IP Docketing Software. Alt Legal Trademark Protection includes Trademark Application Match and §2(d) Trademark Watch, a set of fully-automated monitoring and watch tools that you can use seamlessly with your Alt Legal IP Docketing software to provide you with an integrated docketing and full US-docket monitoring experience.
Trademark Application Match and §2(d) Trademark Watch track USPTO filings at critical points during the trademark prosecution process, alerting you of potential infringement with plenty of time to develop an enforcement strategy and take action. These tools provide a low-cost alternative to expensive monitoring services and allow you to provide a base level of monitoring over your entire docket of US marks.
Your clients benefit because their marks are being monitored. You benefit from opportunities to reach out to clients about potential infringement, offer additional legal services to protect the trademark, and overall, build your relationship with clients long after a trademark has been registered. We’ve already heard so many success stories from Alt Legal Trademark Protection customers who received notifications about potential infringement that they never would have known about because their clients did not have monitoring services in place. This opportunity allowed them to reach out to their clients and show that they were looking out for them, offer additional services, and ultimately generate more business for their firms.
Trademark Docketing Software Intake Forms Minimize Non-Billable Tasks and Increase Filings
Alt Legal offers a unique, advanced feature – a collaborative intake form that allows trademark practitioners to collect trademark application information on a form and directly submit it through the Alt Legal docketing platform to the USPTO TEAS system in just a few clicks.
Branded for your firm or company, our collaborative intake form securely makes it faster and easier to collect information about a trademark application. You can pre-populate a portion of, or all of, the intake form before sending it to your client or colleague. You can also send it blank and use it to guide your initial discussion. Alt Legal tells you when your colleague/client both starts and completes the form.
The best part is once you receive the form back and review and update any responses, our unique integration transfers the data directly to the TEAS application without the need to retype anything. Eliminate the back and forth over multiple emails and the need to copy and paste from multiple sources into TEAS forms.
Alt Legal customers report that Alt Legal’s intake forms help minimize non-billable tasks and execute new filings faster and easier. This allows them more time to focus on more substantive, billable matters and also file more trademark applications. See how one Alt Legal customer was able to save 20-30 minutes per application using Alt Legal’s intake forms.
High-Tech Trademark Docketing Software Can Make a Difference in Your Bottom Line
Having a sophisticated, high-tech trademark docketing system like Alt Legal can help you save time, increase efficiency, and bring in more business for your firm. Learn more about what features to look for in the best, most high-tech trademark docketing software.
- Trademark Docketing Software Features Checklist: Organize Your Evaluation
- Top 5 Trademark Docketing System “Must Haves”
If you have any questions about how to choose the best IP docketing software for your organization, our knowledgeable team is here to help. Reach out to us at sales@altlegal.com. Also, we would be pleased to offer you a free trial or demo of Alt Legal IP Docketing Software. To sign up, click here.