Anaqua
Managing Intellectual Property at the Enterprise Level

Priya Iyer, CEO of Anaqua, believes that music offers an interesting metaphor for organizational thought leadership. “Watch a symphony orchestra and you’ll find virtuosos’ playing musical score under the guidance of a conductor–it doesn’t work without all three. Now watch a jazz quartet and you’ll find virtuosos playing a piece of music with no conductor. Instead, they listen and respond to one another. A single song is played differently different each night as the musicians draw inspiration from each other and the audience. Each musical form produces beautiful results but Anaqua is more like jazz. We trust our collaborative approach. The model works well for us because it’s a satisfying to work in, and it matches our dynamic market,” says Priya. Specialized in offering comprehensive software solutions for Intellectual Asset Management (IAM), Anaqua was formed to fill a critical gap in enterprise software. It manages the entire lifecycle of patents, trademarks and other types of Intellectual Property. To meet the market needs of global corporation in a holistic way, Anaqua develops software solutions incorporating IAM best practices for companies of all sizes.

Today, the company’s flagship product ANAQUA Enterprise is used by global organizations like HP, Honda, Kimberly-Clark, and SAP to accomplish their complex IAM requirements. The system is designed to enhance business productivity across multiple functions within the organization, by providing a comprehensive Intellectual Property (IP) infrastructure that is integrated with other business systems. “It also provides a highly configurable centralized platform to enable all business processes in a secured way,” adds Priya. The software allows users to configure online portals with service providers, set budgets, manage portfolios, integrate content services for data validation, and access operational reports on costs, performance, and cycle times.

“Innovation drives the world’s economy yet many enterprises fight their way. Our platform helps them overcome those obstacles,” opines Priya. This holds true for companies of any size – even those with relatively small IP portfolios. Anaqua offers a range of solutions that help businesses and law firms optimize the process of protecting all kinds of IP including patents, trademarks and trade secrets.

Innovation drives the world’s economy, yet many enterprises fight their way through a multitude of isolated, hard-to-use systems and processes….Our platform helps them to overcome those obstacles

With Anaqua’s four key strategy pillars for innovation, IP protection, docketing and prosecution management, portfolio management and market insight—“we manage the entire IP process from conceptualization to creating real IP rights, licensing, portfolio management. We help them convert the IP department from a cost center to a true profitcenter,” says Priya. The company deems their mobile apps as the key highlighting factor, which is designed for on-the-go attorneys, managers and IP staff who need fast access to IP information everywhere.

Anaqua was instrumental in streamlining the complex intellectual property management environment of Hewett Packard, which was using 12 to 15 distinct solutions knitted together to manage their IP infrastructure. Anaqua eliminated that redundancy and complexity. It also automated the entire process flow making the organization completely paper-free. “One of our other clients, Kimberly-Clark saved $10 million over a period of time by leveraging our portfolio management tools,” says Priya.

Anaqua’s next big move will be to integrate content and Big Data into IAM360, a platform that enriches the entire IP lifecycle with market insight for strategic alignment and decision support. “It would help companies to gain competitive advantage from their intellectual assets while reducing IP-related risks to the business,” says Priya. On geographical front, after setting its footprint in the U.S. and European market, the company is now looking forward to capturing the Asian market with a focus on China and Japan.