Patent & Trademark Examination Workflow

Principal workflows

• Understand the application: The examiner records the claims and classification of a patent application, or the mark, goods and services and design codes of a trademark application, and lists the claim elements a search needs to cover.
• Search: Examiners search the patent, literature and trademark sources your office makes available in their own tools and record each search here. Your office's search tool can also send its results through the Work API as suggestions.
• Review: The examiner records each reference found, the claim elements it shows and the passages relied on, marks what is relevant and why, and sets aside the rest.
• Record: The claim chart and search history export as CSV files and the examination record prints on one page, beside the office action the examiner drafts here from your office's templates. The product issues nothing: actions are recorded as issued once your case system has issued them.

Who uses it

• Patent examiners and supervisory patent examiners in a national intellectual property office
• Trademark examining attorneys and their managers
• Search and classification specialists who support examination
• Quality assurance staff who review the completeness of searches
• Office leadership and oversight bodies who need to see how searches and determinations are recorded

Reporting

• Applications by stage, by art unit or examining law office
• References relied on, under review and set aside, by reference kind
• Share of tool-suggested references examiners accepted or rejected
• Quality review findings on search completeness
• Searches reopened after claim amendments
• Days to first action, by art unit or examining law office

Features

• Claim element breakdown: The examiner lists the claim elements, one per line with a label, so each one can be charted separately and the breakdown edited at any time.
• Search tool suggestions: References your office's search tool sends through the Work API wait for the examiner's decision with the tool's rank, which never sets relevance.
• Original-language check: A document in another language can be relied on only once the examiner records that its passages were checked against the original or an official translation.
• Non-patent literature: Journal articles and other literature are recorded and charted the same way as patent documents, and reported separately by reference kind.
• Passages by element: Each reference records the passages relied on against each claim element label, so the examiner's reasons stay with the evidence.
• Claim charts: Passages the examiner relies on are assembled into a claim chart by element, which exports as CSV for the case system.
• Mark comparison aids: Each cited mark is compared with the application's mark by spelling and sound code, with overlapping classes shown; these are aids, not similarity decisions.
• Design codes: Design codes on the application and on cited marks are compared, and design code searches are recorded in the search history.
• Complete search history: Every query, source, date and number of results reviewed is kept as the record of the search, and locked once complete.
• Examiner-controlled relevance: Only people mark references as relevant; a search tool's rank is shown as a suggestion, and a Work API key can't set relevance.
• Quality review view: Reviewers see the search history and selected references beside the action that followed, and record their findings.
• Search and reference record: Each reference records how it was found (the examiner's search, a specialist, the applicant or your search tool) and the tool's rank beside the examiner's decision, and every search is kept in the search history.

Integrations

• Case management system: Applications, claims, classifications and assignments created by your case system team through the Work API or loaded by CSV import.
• Patent document collections: The patent collections your examiners search are listed in the search sources register with when each was last updated; documents they cite are recorded as references.
• Non-patent literature sources: The literature databases your office licenses are listed in the search sources register; examiners search them in their own tools and record the articles they cite.
• Trademark register: Registered and pending marks the examining attorney cites, with their classes and design codes, recorded from your trademark records or sent by your search tool through the Work API.
• Sign-in: Staff sign in with their Moraph account, using email and password and, optionally, two-step verification. Sign-in through your own identity provider (SAML or OpenID Connect) is not offered.
• Work API: Applications, references, search records and quality review results available to your data warehouse and reporting tools through the Moraph Work API, except unpublished applications.

Deployment

• Moraph cloud: Hosted and operated by Moraph on Cloudflare's network.
• With a managed service: Optionally run alongside a Moraph managed service for administration, source updates and integration support.

Security and privacy

• Confidential applications: Unpublished application content is visible only to its assigned examiner, the people on its examination team and product administrators (supervisory examiners), supporting the confidentiality the law requires.
• No AI models: The product doesn't use AI, so application content and examiner decisions are never used to train models.
• United States hosting: Data is hosted on Cloudflare's network, in a database that is not restricted to a jurisdiction.
• Encryption and keys: Client data is encrypted.
• Complete audit trail: Every record change, relevance decision, export and opening of the printable examination record is logged with the person and time, and cannot be edited.
• Tested releases: Every release passes security testing gates before it ships, and a software bill of materials is maintained for the product.

Limitations

• It does not decide patentability or registrability. Examiners decide what is relevant and make every determination, and the office's procedures apply.
• It doesn't search for prior art or conflicting marks. Examiners search in their own tools, or your office's search tool sends its results through the Work API.
• It doesn't connect to any patent, literature or trademark database; the search sources register records what examiners search and when each source was last updated.
• It doesn't translate. A document in another language is relied on only once the examiner records that its passages were checked against the original or an official translation.
• It doesn't issue office actions or send anything to applicants; actions drafted from templates are recorded as issued once your case system has issued them.
• Moraph holds no FedRAMP authorization for this product. We provide control documentation to support your office's own authorization decision.
• It is not designed for classified information, including applications under secrecy orders, which must be handled outside it.
• It doesn't rank results or decide whether marks are similar; the spelling and sound codes are aids, and a search tool's rank is shown only as a suggestion.

Next steps

Book a demonstration or a technical briefing at www.moraph.com/solutions/patent-and-trademark-examination-workflow. Purchasing routes and company information: www.moraph.com/how-to-buy.