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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Inside Ankar: How we designed AI tools that empower patent professionals

Wiem Gharbi

Co-founder

0 MIN READ

The future of intellectual property depends on tools that empower experts, not replace them. At Ankar, this belief shapes our product vision and every line of code we write. It informs how we build, how we collaborate with customers, and how we ensure AI adapts to expert workflows—not the other way around.

Our AI-native platform is designed to accelerate the work of patent professionals—enhancing their capabilities without compromising their control across critical IP workflows: generation, prosecution, and protection.


Generation: Transform Innovation Pipelines

Ankar's generation suite supports early-stage innovation by helping experts assess novelty, identify competitive landscapes, and structure disclosures for patent readiness. From invention capture to prior art analysis, each workflow is designed to keep experts in control while improving clarity and efficiency.

One example of our generation solutions is our patentability analysis engine. With access to over 150 million patents and publications, users can upload their inventions, identify relevant prior art, and understand how it impacts invention patentability—all in one place.

Ankar surfaces prior art that traditional tools may overlook and presents it with structured context: why it matters, how it compares, and what to do next. Rather than functioning as a black box, our tools offer transparent reasoning and adjustable criteria so professionals can tailor the experience to their own process. The goal isn't to automate judgment—it's to give IP and R&D teams more space to apply it.

Motorway UK experienced this firsthand when they faced a surge in invention disclosures. Leveraging the Ankar platform, their legal team streamlined patentability reviews. The result was not only faster research, but also clearer thinking around the commercial and legal viability of their innovations.


Prosecution: Accelerate Patent Filings

Ankar's prosecution suite is built to help teams manage growing workloads without sacrificing legal or technical precision. Whether drafting new applications or responding to examiners, the tools adapt to your internal standards and processes.

Take our patent drafting assistant. It's designed to help attorneys draft faster while maintaining structure, tone, and legal accuracy. Users can:

  • Upload prior applications and templates to train a personalized style guide

  • Collaborate with an AI assistant to work through each part of the application iteratively

  • Run consistency checks with built-in logic to ensure claims and descriptions remain aligned and coherent

All outputs are editable. Every suggestion is non-destructive. You can revise, adapt, or override at any time. Ankar works with your process, not against it.

Customers report a 40-60% reduction in time spent on drafting and office actions. The result: more time with inventors, faster filings, and greater team capacity. It's one reason our prosecution tools see over 90% adoption post-trial.

At Valeo, one of the world's top patent filers, the IP team partnered with Ankar to modernize their drafting process. By automating routine formatting and aligning output to internal templates, they improved efficiency without compromising quality.

"Our co-development with Ankar and the use of their generative AI solutions strengthen our capacity to protect our innovations and optimize our process for patent filings.”

Murielle Khairallah, VP Intellectual Property, Valeo


Protection: Analyze Infringements with Precision

Ankar's protection suite helps you stay ahead of competitors with AI-powered infringement detection and freedom-to-operate tools that uncover risks, reveal opportunities, and protect your innovations.

For example, we designed our infringement detection solution to empower IP teams to define exactly what to flag and how many results to review. These solutions shouldn’t drown you in irrelevant matches—you control similarity criteria, technical focus areas, and output volume based on internal capacity.

This level of flexibility is what helped the Nexans IP team, who had long struggled with overly generic tools that failed to drive action. By using Ankar's infringement detection platform, they were able to isolate 30 highly specific product-level matches—each backed with visual evidence, source links, and technical context.

For Nexans, this was the first time a tool had delivered not just potential overlaps, but actionable insights. By slicing claims intelligently and returning structured results with context—like images, companies, and purchase links—Ankar gave their team the clarity to move from identification to enforcement.

When done right, AI transforms IP protection from a reactive oversight process into an active commercial strategy.

"I have been looking for this infringement detection tool for 15 years.”

Boris Welzer, Director IP, Nexans


Building With and For the Expert

We've learned that the value of AI in IP doesn't come from automation alone—it comes from how well it supports expert decision-making. That's why we focus on building tools that align with how IP professionals actually work, rather than forcing them into rigid systems.

From search to drafting, we've worked closely with legal teams, R&D leads, and patent attorneys to shape flexible, transparent workflows. These tools aren't meant to replace judgment—they're built to support it.

As AI capabilities grow, we remain committed to a principle that's guided us from the beginning: the best results come when technology and expertise move together, not apart.

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Get Your AI Operating System for Patents today
Get Your AI Operating System for Patents today
Get Your AI Operating System for Patents today
Get Your AI Operating System for Patents today