Ankar

Today, we're introducing a completely redesigned document editing experience to deliver high-fidelity compatibility with Microsoft Word. For patent professionals, Word is the standard for drafting and exchanging work product. Partners, clients, and foreign associates all use .docx files to collaborate on documents before filing with the patent office. AI shouldn't require teams to leave those workflows behind. That's why we've rebuilt our editor to deliver native-like compatibility with Microsoft Word. With our new editor, you can: - Open existing Word (.docx) documents in Ankar with accurate rendering - Preserve firm letterheads, document templates, custom styles, headers, footers, fonts, spacing, and formatting - Export back to Word with comments and tracked changes preserved This means teams can move seamlessly between Ankar and Word throughout the drafting process. Attorneys, partners, clients, and foreign associates can continue reviewing documents in Word exactly as they do today, while drafters benefit from AI inside Ankar. Read more about our new editor in the comments below.

One of the biggest questions facing AI adoption in patent practice is not whether systems are customizable. It is how customization actually happens. When reviewing offerings on the market I'd encourage everyone to ask three questions - 1) who is responsible for doing the customizing, 2) when does that work happen, 3) what level of friction and lift is required for customization? A common customization approach is to ask firms to codify their templates, playbooks, standards, and preferences into a system. That may work well enough when preferences and standards are already explicit and documented (and when budgets permit the time investment required), but much of what makes a great patent practice "great" emerges through the work product itself, along with the process of doing the work. - The claim revisions that strengthen protection - The spec edits that improve clarity or provide key technical examples and benefits - The judgment calls that distinguish technically correct from strategically valuable The challenge with AI adoption is that we should not require the people with the most expertise to step away from real work and become responsible for manually translating that expertise into the system. An ideal approach to AI augmentation should reduce the burden of best practice capture and redeployment, not create another information collection and management project. This is why Knowledge is a foundational capability within Ankar. Instead of requiring teams to manually document and encode every preference and judgment call, Ankar distills knowledge directly from the work product and work process itself: the existing go-bys, multi-turn interactions, and on the fly feedback that represent how a practice actually operates. This means that teams enjoy a low-friction, low-lift way to continuously align the platform with their practice, all while maintaining granular control over exactly how, when, and where that customization is deployed. We believe patent professionals should not have to stop practicing to teach AI how they work. Rather, AI should make it easier to capture, refine, and scale the expertise already embedded in the practice.

This Thursday, Ankar and IPWatchdog, Inc will host a webinar on AI for DNA & RNA Patent Preparation. We'll explore how AI is changing sequence-heavy patent drafting — from organising DNA/RNA sequence data, assisting with sequence annotation, and generating WIPO ST.26-ready sequence listings. The session will also look at how sequence analysis, including sequence alignment and minimum identity, can help support broader and more defensible claim strategies. Moderated by Gene Quinn, the discussion includes: • Brian Cocca, Ph.D., Executive Director, Assistant General Counsel, IP, Regeneron • Mandeep Kaur, Ph.D., IP Attorney, Senior Associate, Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP • Giulia Toti, Head of Life Sciences and GTM, Ankar 📅 30 July | 12pm–1pm ET Register here: https://lnkd.in/eSwjNuKB

We’re excited to be at the National Association of Patent Practitioners (NAPP) Annual Conference 2026 in Seattle! If you are around, come and meet the Ankar team to see how patent professionals are using AI to accelerate drafting, office actions, and everyday patent workflows — while keeping quality, reliability, and control at the centre. We’d love to hear how your team is approaching AI adoption and show you what we’re building for the future of patent practice.

We're excited to have been invited by patenza to join their latest webinar on AI in patent practice. Most discussions about AI in patent practice focus on what the technology could do. In this webinar, we'll focus on what it looks like in practice. We're particularly pleased that Dirk Kromm, Patent Attorney at Dennemeyer and an Ankar customer, will be joining us to share his experience using Ankar in his day-to-day work. The session will be moderated by Johannes Ernicke (patenza) and will also feature: • Harm van der Heijden – Head of Patent Innovation, Ankar; Former Senior Partner at NLO | European patent and trademark attorneys • Lukas Bogenrieder & Florian Zobel, PhD – Patent Product Engineers, Ankar Register here: https://lnkd.in/d5BfnpfB

Choosing an AI tool is the easy part. Jean Yves Legendre, Competitive IP Intelligence Manager at L'Oréal, puts it directly: AI is not magic. It has to fit in the organisation and in the full process. You have to consider the impact on people, teams, and how the mission is shared worldwide. For a company operating at L'Oréal's scale — global laboratories, multiple territories, complex chemistry — that meant starting with needs rather than with a product. Most vendors arrived with a predefined solution. Ankar began by understanding L'Oréal's specific challenges: deep chemistry combined with highly complex formulations. The result was a system configured to fit L'Oréal's reality rather than one that required L'Oréal to adapt its workflows to fit a standard platform. For R&D and IP teams evaluating AI adoption, the implementation question is worth asking early. Not only what does this tool do, but how does it fit into the organisation, the existing processes, and the people responsible for the work. The selection decision is relatively straightforward. The implementation decision is where adoption succeeds or stalls.

Before joining Ankar, Milanka (Mila) Trang studied Public Law at UC San Diego, minored in Computer Science Engineering, earned her JD, and became a patent agent. Previously at Esplin & Associates, PC, she drafted and prosecuted patent applications across a wide range of clients and technologies. At Ankar, Mila joins our growing team of Patent Product Engineers - experienced patent practitioners who embed with patent teams to support onboarding, training, and change management. They speak the language of patent professionals, helping customers adopt AI with confidence while translating practitioner workflows and feedback into product improvements for our engineering team. As more patent organizations adopt AI, we're continuing to invest in people who deeply understand patent practice and can translate that language into product development. That bridge is essential to building software that fits naturally into the way patent teams work. Outside of work, Mila enjoys playing pickleball and running. Welcome to the team, Mila.

In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit reversed PTAB findings that had invalidated several Google patents relating to hotword detection across multiple devices. The court held that the prior-art reference failed to disclose a critical claim limitation: exchanging information while devices remained in a low-power mode. Because that limitation was missing, anticipation could not be established. The takeaway for patent professionals is straightforward: Precise claim language matters. The PTAB accepted an interpretation that effectively bridged a gap in the prior art through expert testimony. The Federal Circuit disagreed, emphasizing that anticipation requires the reference to actually disclose every claim limitation, not merely something close to it. As AI-assisted drafting tools become more capable, one of the greatest opportunities is helping practitioners identify and consistently articulate these critical technical distinctions throughout an application. That’s what Ankar is built to do: surface the limitations that matter, trace them to their support in the specification, and maintain that precision across every stage of prosecution. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eAH3gkEX

We are delighted to welcome Tony Shaw as an Advisor to Ankar. Tony has spent more than 20 years as a patent attorney building global IP assets across biotech, pharma, medtech, and digital health. A significant portion of that time was spent in contentious work, including IP due diligence and the technical aspects of patent litigation. He brings more than 15 years of Big Law experience alongside deep relationships with early-stage companies, research institutions, and global biotech and pharma organisations across Australia and beyond. Recognised in the IAM 1000 and Patent Strategy 300 as a Managing IP Patent Star, Tony is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys. Tony's perspective is especially valuable to Ankar because he’s actively implementing AI solutions into his team's daily practice, adopting commercially available tools and building his own life sciences specific patent tools from scratch. That combination of deep practitioner experience and hands-on AI implementation is exactly what Ankar needs as we build the AI operating system for innovation globally. Welcome, Tony.