§Our people
Patent analysts who read what the machines find
We organize the team by discipline, not by title. Engineers, scientists, data scientists, illustrators, and commercial analysts work in small crews, and every report is read by two of them before it leaves.
§ 01Context
Why we describe disciplines, not names
Our patent analysts come from engineering, the physical and life sciences, and data science. Illustrators, commercial analysts, and coordinators work beside them and turn findings into drawings, valuations, and introductions. On this site we describe what the team knows rather than who is on it. You will work with named people on your engagement, starting with your lead analyst at kickoff. But the product you are buying is not one person’s résumé. It is a method that holds when any qualified analyst runs it, and a review step that catches what any single reader misses.
That is the point of a crew. No single gear tells time, and no single reader catches everything. A mechanical engineer reads a hinge claim differently from a materials scientist, and both read it differently from the data scientist who tuned the query. We put those readings side by side on purpose, and the method is built so that their disagreements surface before the report reaches you.
§ 02Disciplines
The disciplines on our bench
Each engagement draws on the disciplines its technology needs. These are the ones we staff.
Electrical and computer engineering
Circuits, semiconductors, wireless, software, and signal processing. These analysts know the same function can hide under five different names, and they read standards documents line by line for SEP mapping.
Mechanical engineering
Mechanisms, tools, consumer products, robotics, and medical hardware. They often read the figures before the claims, because in mechanical art the drawing frequently carries the disclosure.
Materials science and chemistry
Compositions, coatings, batteries, and processes. They search by structure and property as well as by words, and they know which journals tend to publish ahead of the patents.
Life sciences
Diagnostics, therapeutics, research tools, and biomedical devices. Much of the art in these fields lives in journals, conference abstracts, and theses, so non-patent literature is routine work.
Data science
Builds and audits our AI-assisted recall, from semantic queries to classification and citation expansion, plus the landscape analytics behind Hoard Atlas. Part of the job is proving where the model is wrong.
20Technical illustration
USPTO-format line drawings, shaded design views, GUI and AR/VR imagery, and 3D renders. Illustrators work from the same record as the analysts, so the figure matches the finding.
22Commercial analysis
Valuation ranges, buyer and licensee universes, and pruning rankings. They translate the technical record into the questions a CFO, an investor, or a licensing manager actually asks.
24Transaction coordination
Runs the logistics of brokerage and licensing: outreach records, data rooms, timelines, and communication with your counsel, who handles every agreement.
26Client operations
Scoping calls, quotes, NDAs, invoices, file transfers, and deletion requests. The people who make sure nothing is billed that was not quoted.
§ 03Staffing
How an engagement is staffed
Every engagement gets a crew sized to its scope. The size changes. The roles don’t.
- 01
Lead analyst
Matched to your technology by discipline. Owns the scope, designs the queries, reads the references, writes the report, and runs your review call.
- 02
Second reader
A different analyst who did not run the search. Checks the queries against the scope, rereads the closest references, challenges the mapping, and signs off. No report leaves without that sign-off.
- 03
Illustrator
Joins when the work needs figures, design views, or 3D visuals, and works directly from the lead analyst’s record rather than from a summary of it.
- 04
Commercial analyst
Joins valuation, pruning, brokerage, and licensing work to turn technical findings into ranges, rankings, and target lists, with every assumption written down.
- 05
Coordinator
Keeps the engagement on schedule, manages files and NDAs, and on transactions keeps your counsel informed at every step.
§ 04Standards
Hiring, training, and the second-reader rule
We hire for reading. Every candidate completes a work sample built from public documents, never client material, and we judge it the way a second reader would. Did they find the reference that matters? Did they map it honestly? Did they write down why? Credentials matter less than the habit of checking.
New analysts start as second readers. Reviewing other people’s searches is the fastest way to learn where searches fail: a missing synonym, a classification left unexplored, a foreign family member nobody followed. Analysts lead engagements only after they have shown they can catch those gaps in someone else’s work.
The second-reader rule has no exception for seniority. Our most experienced analysts are reviewed like everyone else, and their reviewers are expected to push back. Training continues through a learning budget for database courses, classification training, and technical reading in each discipline. When a search tool changes, the data science team tests it against known results before anyone relies on it in client work, and the tools used are named in every audit trail. If this sounds like your kind of work, see our open roles.
No report leaves with only one reader.
The second reader is never the person who ran the search, and seniority buys no exemption.
§ 05Independence
Nobody here profits from the answer
Our fee is the same whether a search finds three close references or none. Fixed-fee quotes mean no one gains by stretching a search or softening a finding, and nothing is billed beyond the quote without your written approval.
We take no referral fees from patent attorneys or agents. When a client needs a practitioner and doesn’t have one, we share a list of independent practitioners to contact, and the choice is the client’s. When we support practitioners directly, we never contact their clients without permission. Brokerage success-fee terms are written down before any marketing begins, so everyone at the table knows how we are paid. The rest of our boundaries are set out in scope and disclosures.
Keep reading
Related pages
§Next step
Put a crew on your question
Tell us the technology and the decision. We’ll match a lead analyst by discipline and send a fixed-fee quote within one business day of a free scoping call.