InspireIP

InspireIP is intellectual property and idea management software, published as a lightweight alternative to legacy IP tools, covering IP Assist, Inventor Assist and Idea Assist alongside AI prior art search and portfolio management.

It sits in this category because idea capture and innovation challenges overlap with hackathon programmes: an organisation running internal innovation events needs somewhere for the ideas to go afterwards, and an idea worth protecting needs an invention disclosure process. That afterwards question is precisely what most hackathon programmes fail to answer.

The lightweight positioning against legacy tools is the commercial argument, and it targets a real gap. Enterprise IP management software is built for corporate legal departments handling large patent portfolios, priced and configured accordingly. An engineering organisation that wants employees to submit invention disclosures does not need that, and the alternative in practice is an email address and a spreadsheet, which means disclosures are lost and inventions are published before anyone files.

Inventor Assist addresses the human side of that, since engineers are frequently poor at recognising which of their work is patentable and reluctant to engage with a legal process they find opaque.

AI prior art search is the capability that changes the economics. A prior art search performed by a patent attorney is expensive enough that organisations only commission one once they are fairly committed, so early triage is done by guesswork. Automating first-pass search means an obviously anticipated idea can be discarded before money is spent.

Pricing is not user-based, published as paying for outcomes, with a figure of $1,799 published.