For an efficient administration of patents and trademarks, we offer a system that provides a extremely simple and clear user interface. Based upon a standard data entry screen authorised users can modify this without any programming knowledge. With this functionality, PC Master offers the option to customise an administration system to the terminology and the workflow of a patent department or a law practice.
- System Administrator
- Security
- Reporting
- Country Rules, Docketing and Actions
- Data Integrity
- Form Letters
- Browses and Indexing
- Copy Function for Records
- Global Change
- Help
- Related Cases
- Interface to MDC Annuity Payment Service
PC Master comes complete with a System Administration Module. This module allows an organisation to configure the software to meet their unique requirements. Although the field of intellectual property law is relatively standard, each organisation is unique in how they function. PC Master was designed with this philosophy in mind - don’t change the organization to meet the needs of the software, change the software to meet the needs of the organisation. The more your system reflects your organisation’s own terminology, procedures, and work flow, the more effective and efficient your application becomes.
Information
which can be customised from within the System Administration Module
includes:
·
Tabs (groups
of related information)
·
Field
Names
·
Lookup
Code Tables
·
User
Security Profiles
·
Browses (indexes)
· Disclosure Cycle Times
· etc.
Access to the system is password protected through user-definable ID's and Passwords. These classifications begin at the file (module) level and continue to the file card level within a record. For example, a particular user might have add/change/delete access to Patents, but inquiry only access to the Country Rules. Security is further enhanced to allow divisions access to only their records for viewing or reporting, plus the ability to display or not display information (fields) based on 1 of 5 user profiles. Additionally a site security level has recently been added to create user roles which either allow data modification or only allow reviewing data.
PC Master is the only patent docketing system on the market with its own internal report writer. Because of this, reports are generated very quickly. To supplement its internal report writer, PC Master complies with ODBC standards to allow most 3rd party report writing tools (i.e. Access®, Crystal Reports®) to work in conjunction with its database for report generation. In essence, the user has the best of both worlds.
Country Rules, Docketing and Actions
The pre-eminent feature of PC Master
is the automatic generation of due dates according to country law and
company practices. The "Rules Database" contains current as
well as historical laws which correctly calculate due dates when entering
old or current data. These automatic calculations combined with your own
action entries will make up docketing reports in whatever fashion you
wish. Upon completion, these actions are moved to a history file for reference
and reporting purposes.
Master Data Center maintains the
most comprehensive set of country rules in the world. Based upon input
from the worldwide network of foreign agents and the clients, the rules
are monitored and updated and actions due in over 120 countries around the
world are added. These updates are electronically provided to our customer
base for update on a quarterly basis.
Due to the critical nature of the data contained within the system, extensive validation is enforced to ensure data integrity. The system requires valid data in order to accurately calculate due dates and annuity amounts due. To ensure data integrity, 3 types of data field validation are performed within the system:
- Mandatory / Optional
- List of values
- Relational
The first level of validation ensures
that data elements required by the system are indeed present.
The second level of validation
ensures not only that the data is present, but that it is valid. To ensure
validity, cross-reference tables are established by the user prior to data
entry. These cross-reference tables then contain the valid entries for
data elements such as country, status, or attorney. During data entry,
this list of valid entries appears in the drop down list box for the
particular data element.
A standard letter or form generator is included which allows the user to develop simple standard pre-formatted letters, and incorporate data from the system into the document.
The system is delivered with several pre-defined "browses" or entry points into the data. These browses are used to locate records in the database. Each browse presents the database content with a different view onto the data (i.e. sorted by country or by attorney). Browses are also utilized by the reporter for quick and efficient generation of listings. The user may add to this set of pre-defined browses from an available list of 100.
Once a record has been entered into the system, the information (either some of it or all of it) can be quickly copied into another record. The user can also designate the creation of multiple country records with the same copy function. This significantly reduces the time associated with data entry.
Another time saving feature of the system is the global change capability. This feature allows the user to substitute one data value for another, across the entire database, based upon specified criteria. For example, if all cases for a particular division have been transferred from attorney Jennifer Louis to Manfred Man, the data base modification can be made on a global versus a record-by-record basis.
Help is available from any point in the system, with inquiry to the specific area of concern. In addition, meaningful error messages and informational messages are displayed to assist in the use of the system.
PC Master offers a hotkey interface to any designated record stored on the PC Master System. Links may be created between within the same module or e.g. Patent to Patent or across modules e.g. Patent to Trademark or Patent to Conflict or Trademark to Conflict or both. Each docket in one module may be linked to each other docket in each other module.
Interface to MDC Annuity Service
PC Master has a built in interface to MDC's annuity payment service. This program will copy each record with an annuity payment due to a separate file that is sent to MDC for payment processing by e-mail. This procedure eliminates the need for paper flow and avoids the risk of any miscommunication. The interface also works the other way as payments are made, the system can be updated to tell you which patents where paid by MDC, for how much and when.
You may download a brochure in PDF format from here.
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