STREAM IP: Bringing AI-driven clarity to global patent filing

The new patent-focused platform from Toppan Digital IP offers AI-driven translation and portfolio analytics. SVP Neil Simpkin explains how it’s helping the C-suite to manage portfolios. 

When organisations move from drafting a patent to securing protection around the world, things get complicated. Deadlines diverge, filing routes multiply, and translation costs stack up.

And for many multinationals, the international phase of the patent lifecycle remains the hardest part to manage.

STREAM IP, the new specialist patent-focused platform from Toppan Digital IP, aims to change that.

A division with deep roots

Although Toppan Digital IP only launched as a dedicated intellectual property (IP) solutions division of Toppan Digital Language a year ago, its leadership brings decades of experience.

The company’s senior vice president of IP Solutions, Neil Simpkin, has spent more than 30 years in the patent translation industry, long enough to see numerous waves of technology—but few will have had the same transformative potential as today’s AI-driven tools.

STREAM IP sits squarely in the international filing stage of the patent lifecycle—after ideation, drafting, and even after the first filing.

“It’s when our customers, and that could be law firms or corporates, are looking to extend their initial first filing into other countries,” Simpkin explains.

“They will use STREAM IP to generate instant quotes for filing via PCT national phase entry, direct filing, or Paris Convention filing, and also the EPC route.”

Instant quotes, automated workflows, connected systems

The platform allows users to upload a portfolio and instantly generate fast, accurate cost estimates for any desired jurisdiction, says Simpkin.

Quotes include PTO fees, service fees, and translation costs— where STREAM IP draws heavily on its parent company’s expertise in language-technology.

Ultimately owned and backed by Japanese conglomerate Toppan Group, the new IP service can draw on tech used by sister company Toppan Digital Language.

Using AI-enabled linguistic workflows, STREAM IP identifies repetitive or boilerplate content in patent disclosures, ensuring customers “are essentially paying for humans where humans are really needed, but not where they’re not,” Simpkin says.

With patents containing substantial repeated structures and analytical data, he argues that this is an area where AI can provide immediate cost savings without compromising on quality.

Beyond quoting, STREAM IP tracks milestones across the entire international filing arc—from national phase entry to receipt of local filing data to grant preparation—and passes cases into renewal and annuity management.

The system also offers a modern approach to integration.

“We’re not looking to become an IP management system,” Simpkin stresses. Instead, STREAM IP connects via API to a corporate or law firm’s existing docketing or IPMS platform, feeding real-time portfolio data back and forth without forcing users to duplicate work.

Designed for paralegals—ready-made for the C-Suite

STREAM IP’s primary day-to-day users are patent paralegals, both inside law firms and in corporations. To support them, Toppan Digital IP also provides its own in-house team to manage filing services, creating what Simpkin calls a “paralegal-to-paralegal journey”.

But the platform also includes dashboards and business-intelligence tools aimed at attorneys, heads of IP operations, and chief IP counsel. These users can monitor costs, upcoming deadlines, filing trends, and portfolio trajectories in real time.

For law firms, STREAM IP can also be white-labelled—allowing them to present the technology directly to clients under their own brand.

Using AI to create ‘tangible value’

“Every company in the world is talking about AI,” Simpkin observes, “but it’s often difficult to recognise where that’s actually bringing genuine, tangible value into an operational context.”

STREAM IP’s answer focuses on two concrete areas. AI-enabled language workflows leverage recent breakthroughs in translation technology and machine translation to reduce cost and turnaround times.

But unlike general-purpose translation tools, these workflows are trained and optimised specifically for patent content.

This, Simpkin argues, is a major differentiator.

“There are language service providers out there who do a good job of leveraging AI within the translation process, but don’t have the IP knowledge to actually apply that technology to patent-specific content.

“Whereas we really understand our customers’ patent portfolios, their technologies, and we're able to actually build specific, bespoke tools that align to our customers’ patent content.

“On the other hand, IP service providers, of course, have the IP knowledge, but it's not necessarily backed up with the knowledge of linguistic tools and language technology.”

“There’s a sweet spot in the middle—and that’s where we’re operating.”

All in the planning: Proactive AI

Secondly, AI-driven portfolio intelligence sees STREAM IP load customers’ portfolios and analyse upcoming milestones—Patent Cooperation Treaty 30-month deadlines, European patent grants, national phase triggers—using AI to recommend strategic actions.

The system can suggest when to file, when to avoid late fees, and even which jurisdictions a customer might want to consider based on past behaviour and portfolio trends.

This shifts portfolio management from reactive to proactive, explains Simpkin.

“Using data and AI to analyse customer activity allows us to generate calls to action and help customers optimise their cost and timing.”

STREAM IP positions itself as the missing link between language technology and traditional IP service provision.

Many patent attorney firms, Simpkin notes, do a “fantastic job” of substantive prosecution, but language technology isn’t their specialism.

STREAM IP fills that gap while supporting—rather than replacing—the role of attorneys and paralegals in the global filing process.

See Toppan Digital Services for more information.