Celebrating 15 Years of
Fifteen Years · May 2026
Fifteen years of doing AI for IP, before AI was a thing.
This May, we're celebrating fifteen years. What began as Black Hills IP, a U.S.-based intellectual property support shop with a stubborn idea about doing docketing better, has grown into Black Hills AI, an open IP automation platform that law firms and corporations build on every day. Here's how we got here, and where we're headed next.
Where it started
It started as Black Hills IP.
Black Hills IP, est. 2009
We launched in 2009 with a contrarian belief: that the most deadline-critical, error-prone work in intellectual property (docketing) should not depend on people transcribing data by hand.
While much of the industry sent that work offshore to compete on labor cost, we did the opposite. We stayed onshore, hired across the United States, and started building software to do the work better. That meant our clients could reach a real person during business hours, keep sensitive prosecution data inside the country, and sidestep the complications of U.S. export-control compliance, all while we engineered automation that was faster, more consistent, and dramatically more accurate than manual entry alone.
We never thought of ourselves as a staffing vendor. We thought of ourselves as a technology company that happened to deliver IP services. More than fifteen years later, that framing turned out to be exactly right.
The build
Fifteen-plus years in the making.
We didn't pivot to AI when it became fashionable. We'd spent more than a decade building the deterministic automation that makes AI reliable in the first place.
Black Hills IP opens, onshore and automation-first, building IP automation from day one.
The earliest version of the Otto HUB™ platform integrates with the first IP management systems and the USPTO's Patent Center.
Our first deterministic docketing engine goes into production.
Large-scale, fully automated docketing begins.
Full API integration across every leading API-enabled IP management system.
We surpass one million fully automated docketing transactions.
Black Hills AI is introduced, a name that matches what we'd been building all along.
Generative AI features arrive in Otto HUB™. We launch Otto IP™, our generative-AI patent drafting solution, and Honu™, our agent-reporting platform.
We ship the first-ever automated Evidence-of-Use (EOU) scanning for renewals and expand the Otto IP™ drafting tools.
Otto HUB™ opens its APIs to everyone and introduces app services.
A new name
Black Hills AI.
A new name. Black Hills AI. The new name isn't a change. It's an accurate description of what we've become. For years, "AI for IP" was something we did quietly, underneath the services. Today it is the platform. Otto HUB™ is the deterministic-plus-generative foundation that powers our own tools and, now, the custom AI workflows our clients build themselves.
The mountains in our logo haven't moved. What we build on top of them has.
What we build today
One platform. A full suite of tools. A team that still does the work.
Fifteen years of infrastructure now lives across three layers, each available on its own, and stronger together.
Otto HUB™
The open data and API layer beneath everything we make. Real-time USPTO and Patent Center data, AI enrichment, and a full SDK, so your team can build IP-aware AI tools on infrastructure we've spent fifteen years hardening.
- 25+ live REST and MCP endpoints
- Real-time Patent Center sync
- Integrated with your DMS and IPMS
- Build with Claude, Cursor & Windsurf
Otto IP™ Suite
AI-powered tools for IP prosecution, built on top of Otto HUB™ and designed for how IP professionals actually work.
- Otto IP™: generative-AI patent drafting & prosecution
- Otto IP™ Web: IP management automation, drafting wizard & office-action analysis
- Otto IP™ for Word: draft inside Microsoft Word, with Draw.io & Ketcher
- Otto Assistant™: a generative-AI associate for IP law
IP Automation, Renewals & Outsourcing
Where the platform meets hands-on delivery: the gold-standard docketing, renewals, and paralegal work that built our name, now supercharged by Otto HUB™.
- IP Renewals: transparent annuities with first-of-its-kind AI-powered EOU scanning
- IP Automation: docketing, paralegal & TM docketing, integrations, DocketSaver™, DualDocket™, Patent Center alerts, patent proofing & PTA verification
- IP Outsourcing: docketing, consulting, paralegal, IDS management & foreign correspondence
- Honu™: international patent management & AI-powered file transfer
IP automation
docketing transactions
fully automated
generative AI alone
endpoints
team
Trusted by AmLaw 200 firms and global corporations, including Baker Hostetler, Dickinson Wright, Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner, and Zimmer Biomet.
Thank you
Here's to the next fifteen.
None of this happens without the firms, corporate IP teams, and partners who trusted an onshore upstart with their most critical deadlines, and who keep pushing us to build more. Our bet is the same one we made in 2009: the future of IP belongs to teams who pair human judgment with automation they can actually trust. The difference now is that the platform is open, and the next generation of IP tools is something you can build with us.