Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton offices in Atlanta.

When a Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton client has a late-night or early morning urge to check the status of their patents, they won't have to call or email their attorney. On Tuesday, Kilpatrick Townsend launched its KT Extranet, a free-of-charge client-only web portal for clients to check patent prosecution status.

KT Extranet offers real-time access to a client's patent portfolio and the ability to independently monitor patent assets, export information into company reports, and see docket information regarding issued and pending patents, according to a Kilpatrick Townsend press release. 

In addition, the extranet also has the ability to present “patent family trees,” a feature that the law firm called essential for their clients.

Kilpatrick Townsend partner Mark Mathison explained, “Our clients patent things as a family; they buy and cluster in multiple families. How [a patent family tree] is presented is your first application goes at the top and as you follow with subsequent patents, they branch off and form a tree.”

“We originally looked for a third-party vendor that would do the same,” Mathison added. But the firm didn't find a vendor that would present the data similar to how companies manage their patent intellectual property. So the firm tasked its lawyers and programmers with creating the extranet themselves.

The firm used the patent portal in-house for a few years before deciding clients would also benefit from it. What's more, there may be more client-facing technology offerings from the firm on the horizon.

“We are focusing our resources on what clients really want to see and giving them access to what we can and making the process as transparent as we can,” Mathison said.

Kilpatrick Townsend joins other Big Law firms in offering patent-specific software for their firm and clients. Last year, Perkins Coie turned to legal technology provider Elevate to develop a project manager platform to easily track patent prosecution status for lawyers and clients. Robins Kaplan has also created its own IP tools that reviews clients' patent portfolios and monitors patent fillings for possible infringing filling applications.