Why OttoFlow
Automate the process. Don’t relocate it.
For twenty years, IP management answered rising volume with cheaper hours. OttoFlow™ is built the other way round: every step that runs itself is the product working.
The incentive problem
When hours are the revenue, automation is a cost.
Many legacy vendors built large offshore service teams and sold docketing, data entry, verification, and reporting by the hour or by the transaction. That model made automation the enemy of their own income statement: every procedure that runs itself is revenue that disappears.
That isn’t a criticism of the people doing the work. It’s arithmetic. When the margin is the gap between what an hour is billed at and what it costs, automation arrives slowly — as a feature bolted onto a services business, never as the product itself.
What clients want now
Not cheaper hours. An automated IP operation.
IP practice groups, at law firms and in-house, have been through the outsourcing cycle. Relocating the work made it cheaper — with a longer feedback loop and a thinner audit trail. What they’re asking for now is different in kind.
The post-outsourcing checklist
Fewer human touches per office action
Deadlines computed from the office’s own documents, with provenance
Reports that generate themselves
Docket data their own AI can reach
Our model
OttoFlow is built the other way round.
Black Hills AI makes money when your docket runs itself. OttoFlow is licensed as software, so there’s no hours line for us to protect. The more you automate, the less you spend with us per matter — and the more valuable the system becomes to your clients.
Our U.S.-based specialists are here when you want them. Services are optional, and never required for automation.
5M+
Fully automated docketing transactions
15+
Years taking human touches out of prosecution
25
Full-time software developers
Side by side
Compare the hours model with the automation model.
Hours-based legacy vendor
OttoFlow™
Revenue source
Hours-based legacy vendor
Hours and per-transaction services, with software as the delivery vehicle
OttoFlow™
A software license; services optional and never required for automation
Incentive on automation
Hours-based legacy vendor
Every automated step is lost revenue
OttoFlow™
Every automated step is the product working
Where docketing happens
Hours-based legacy vendor
An offshore service team keys dates from correspondence
OttoFlow™
A rule engine computes obligations from the office’s own documents; people verify by exception
Provenance
Hours-based legacy vendor
A user name and a timestamp
OttoFlow™
Source document, rule, formula, base date, and verifier — on every date
Client reporting
Hours-based legacy vendor
Prepared by staff, on request
OttoFlow™
Generated on schedule from the record, in the client’s format
AI posture
Hours-based legacy vendor
A chat feature inside the vendor’s product
OttoFlow™
Your IP management system as part of your AI infrastructure — MCP controller and open APIs
Who benefits from your growth
Hours-based legacy vendor
The vendor, through more hours
OttoFlow™
The firm and its clients, through more automation per matter
Legacy vendors sell hours. Their clients are asking for the hours to go away. OttoFlow is what you choose when you agree with the clients.
The manual road
A manual process blocks automation, even when you want it.
When docketing runs through a service team, the process lives in people’s heads, email threads, and spreadsheets: which document triggers which action, which client wants the extension docketed, what the file is renamed to, who gets the report. None of it is written as rules a machine can run.
So when a client or the partners decide it’s time to automate, there’s nothing to attach to. The docket is a stream of typed dates with no link to the document or rule behind them — and there’s no event to trigger a notice-of-allowance workflow, because “NOA received” was a person reading a PDF.
Why the road matters more than the wheel
Automation is a process shape, not a tool you point at a manual process. OttoFlow builds the road first: every incoming document is an event, every docket item carries its rule and source, and every workflow stage emits a CloudEvent. AI tools like NOA processing find what they need already computed.
The test
Ask your current vendor for the machine-readable rule and source document behind ten docket entries chosen at random. If the answer is a person, you’re on the manual road.
Evaluating vendors
Three questions to ask. Three things to measure.
What to ask
1
Where does your revenue come from?
What share comes from hours or per-transaction services? The answer tells you how hard a vendor will push to automate your work.
2
How much runs with no human touch?
How many docketing transactions has the software completed without a person — and can the audit trail prove it?
3
Can our client’s AI reach the docket?
Through an open interface, today, without a services engagement? A system that needs vendor staff to get data out is a services contract.
What to measure
1
Touches, not features
Have each vendor process the same month of mail for one client and count the human touches per office action. Feature lists converge; touch counts don’t.
2
Automation, not seats
Model cost per matter at year three, when the docket has grown and the rule library has matured. Hours scale with volume; software scales with automation.
3
The exit
Ask whether your data, rules, and client overrides export in a documented format — and whether your own AI can reach them today.
Explore OttoFlow™
Keep exploring OttoFlow.
The platform
Docketing, prosecution, IDS, reporting, portals, and security on one record.
See the platform →The docketing engine
A rule engine that computes every deadline, with provenance on every date.
See the docketing engine →AI & automation
The prosecution console, the MCP controller, and AI tools built on the docket.
See AI & automation →IDS Manager
Prior-art capture, deduplication, and SB/08 generation, in OttoFlow or on its own.
See IDS Manager →Count the touches on your own mail.
Send us a month of correspondence for one corporate client. We’ll show you the docket OttoFlow produces — every date with its provenance.