AppColl targets solo and small IP practices covering both patents and trademarks, at the affordable end of the combined-practice market. For a firm doing both, it is a sensible place to be.
Where the all-in-one model earns its keep
AppColl is sold to solo and small IP firms as a single system for the whole practice — docketing alongside billing, time, client records and portfolio reporting. For a firm of two or three people that genuinely is the pitch, because the alternative is four subscriptions and nothing reconciling between them.
The trade is the usual one for suite products. Every module is adequate and none is the best available, because engineering attention is spread across billing and reporting as well as deadlines. If docketing is the module you lose sleep over, that distribution works against you.
Quoted pricing, and what to ask for
AppColl does not publish a rate card, which is ordinary in this category and not a criticism — but it does mean the comparison cannot be made from a website and has to be made from a quote. Three things are worth getting in writing before that quote becomes a contract.
What the price scales on. Per user, per matter, per module, or a flat band? A figure that is competitive for four users and two hundred marks can stop being competitive the moment a paralegal joins or a client transfers in a portfolio, and you want to know the slope before you are on it, not after.
What the term is. Monthly, annual, or multi-year, and what the notice period looks like. Suite products are stickier than single-purpose ones by design, because leaving means replacing four things at once rather than one.
What leaving looks like. Specifically: can you export your matters, your notes and your docket history in a usable format, without a professional services engagement to do it? The answer is often fine, and it is much easier to get at the point where someone is trying to sell you something.
The question is your caseload, not the software
Combined platforms are a good answer to a real problem: nobody wants two systems, two logins and two places a deadline might be recorded. If you prosecute patents, stop reading — this is not a comparison you need.
If you do not, the generic matter model costs you. Trademark clocks are peculiar in ways a patent-shaped record does not anticipate: Madrid registrations maintaining under Section 71, grace periods that extend a deadline without removing it, and a revival window measured from a notice rather than from the missed date.
What we would compare instead
- Where do deadlines come from? Derived from the USPTO register, or typed in at docketing. The second is a system that is correct on the day it is set up.
- What happens when an office action issues? If the answer involves someone noticing an email, the docket is downstream of a human.
- What else is on the invoice? Watch and screening bought separately change the comparison entirely.