Frequently asked questions

Darwin Suite is an intellectual property platform developed by Techframe that covers the whole life cycle of IP rights: filing, prosecution, maintenance, monitoring, documents, deadlines, reporting and the collaboration between service providers and the rights holders they represent. Rather than one large program, it is a family of modular web systems that you use as one connected workspace. Darwin Ignite is the IP management system for agents, attorneys and law firms; Darwin Lightbox lets portfolio owners and their service providers consult, review and annotate the same portfolio information; Darwin Axiom analyses, reviews and produces IP and legal documents; Darwin GSE searches trade marks, logos and slogans with artificial intelligence; and Darwin Genius screens new concepts for originality and registrability. All of them share one federated single sign-on, so you use the same email address and password everywhere, and one account structure, so your team, roles, subscriptions, billing, email sending accounts and AI keys are set up once and serve every system your account uses. The interface is available in six languages and each user chooses their own. Darwin Suite serves legal services and IP agents, IP providers, corporate rights holders, government, academia and advertising and creative agencies, with a particularly strong presence in Portuguese-speaking jurisdictions and in Madrid Protocol work. You subscribe to the systems you need and can add others later without learning a new way of signing in.

Darwin Suite is developed by Techframe – Sistemas de Informação, SA, a Portuguese software company that has been delivering software for more than 20 years. Techframe is also the author of Darwin 5.1, the established client-server IP management system that many firms still use every day, so the web systems of the suite, Darwin Ignite, Darwin Lightbox, Darwin GSE and Darwin Axiom, build on long experience of how IP practices and rights holders actually work. Techframe has three offices: its headquarters and support centre in Abrantes, in central Portugal; an office in the Lisbon area, at São Domingos de Rana; and an office in Madrid, Spain. Because the support centre sits at the headquarters, the requests you send through Contact support in the Help Centre go to Techframe itself rather than to a third party. Techframe – Sistemas de Informação, SA is also the data controller for the personal data processed in the suite, which is relevant if you have a data protection question. You can read more about the suite and its systems at www.darwinsuite.com and write to Techframe at info@techframe.pt for general enquiries. The full addresses, telephone numbers and sales contacts are given in the question on contacting Techframe directly.

Darwin Suite is designed for everyone who files, manages, defends or relies on intellectual property rights. Its markets are legal services and IP agents, IP providers, corporate rights holders, government bodies, academia, and advertising and creative agencies. Within those markets it serves two sides of the same relationship. Service providers, meaning IP agents, attorneys and law firms, run their daily work in Darwin Ignite, where they keep their clients' cases, register incoming correspondence, produce letters, watch bulletins and follow deadlines. Portfolio owners, such as brand owners, companies and in-house IP teams, use Darwin Lightbox to consult and annotate the portfolio their provider manages for them, without having to work inside the provider's operational system or ask for status updates by email. Both sides can also use Darwin GSE for AI-assisted trade mark, logo and slogan searches, Darwin Axiom for the analysis and production of IP and legal documents and, for creative and marketing teams, Darwin Genius to screen new concepts while they are being created. The suite has a particularly strong presence in Portuguese-speaking jurisdictions, namely Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Macau, and in work under the Madrid Protocol, while its six interface languages make it usable by international teams. Whether you are a single practitioner or a large organisation, the plans of each system let you start small and grow.

Darwin Suite comprises five web systems. Darwin Ignite is the IP management system for those who manage IP cases, whether service providers such as agents, attorneys and law firms or in-house teams that run their own portfolio. It covers the portfolio, entities, court cases, watches, publications, viabilities, incoming and outgoing documents, deadlines, reports and a performance dashboard. Darwin Lightbox is an IP consultation and annotation system (IPCAS) that supports the interaction and information sharing between IP portfolio owners and the service providers who manage their cases. Darwin Axiom uses artificial intelligence to analyse, review and produce IP and legal documents, with every answer citing its source, for agents, lawyers, in-house teams and brand owners alike. Darwin GSE, the Graphical Search Engine, uses artificial intelligence to search trade marks, logos and slogans by visual, phonetic, conceptual and semantic similarity, for clearance, viability and monitoring. Darwin Genius screens new concepts for originality and registrability while they are still being created. Alongside these, Darwin 5.1 is Techframe's established client-server IP management system, still used by many firms, and it can work with the web systems. Every system shares the same sign-on and account, and you can move between those your account uses from the Systems switcher in the user menu.

Darwin Ignite is the operational heart of the suite for service providers: it is where agents, attorneys and law firms keep and work their clients' IP cases day to day. In Ignite the provider records trade marks, patents, designs and other rights with their dates, parties, classes and history; manages the clients, applicants, agents and other parties in Entity Management; follows litigation in Court Case; monitors official bulletins in the Watch Section and the Publication List; requests viability studies; and keeps track of what falls due. Incoming correspondence is registered through the document workflow drawer, which reads an email, PDF or scanned letter and proposes its classification, sender, summary, deadlines and the cases it mentions for a person to confirm, while outgoing letters and emails are produced from the case with Generate document. Reports, Scrum Boards and a performance dashboard complete the picture. Ignite is also the source of what portfolio owners see in Darwin Lightbox: on the Lightbox tab of a client's entity the provider sets up a synchronisation, and the cases in which that entity plays the chosen role are copied to the client's Lightbox account. In this way the provider's record stays the master, and Lightbox becomes the shared window onto it. Which screens you see in Ignite depends on your role and your account's plan.

Darwin Lightbox is the suite's IP consultation and annotation system, or IPCAS. Its role is to be the window shared between IP portfolio owners and their service providers. Instead of asking for status updates by email or relying on spreadsheets and reports that are out of date as soon as they are sent, the owner signs in to Lightbox and consults the cases, entities and court cases the provider manages, with their general data, history, documents and life cycle graph, and a link to the official register where one exists. Lightbox users can add annotations to a case to record instructions, decisions or questions, optionally marking them Private, and they can consult reports, see the Performance Dashboard and manage their own profile and team. They do not edit case data: what they see is a copy, and corrections are made by the provider in its own system and arrive at the next synchronisation. The information is fed by Darwin Ignite, where the provider sets up a Lightbox sync on the client's entity, and Darwin 5.1 users can be served through the same model, depending on their provider's configuration. Lightbox runs on the same platform as the rest of the suite, with the same sign-on, profile, team, roles, security and Help Centre, but with its own branding and address.

The systems of Darwin Suite are built on one shared platform, so most of what you set up in one is already in place in the others. There is a single federated sign-on, so the same email address and password open every system. Accounts are shared across the suite: the same team and roles, subscriptions, billing details, email sending accounts and AI keys and models serve every system the account uses, and they are managed from the same Profile. You move between systems from the Systems switcher in the user menu, and between accounts from the Accounts switcher, without signing in again; the account you choose scopes all the data you see. Information also flows between systems where that makes sense. Darwin Ignite holds the service provider's operational record, and a Lightbox sync set up on a client's entity copies the relevant cases to the client's Darwin Lightbox account, where they can be consulted and annotated. Darwin GSE carries out the AI trade mark, logo and slogan searching behind the viability requests made in Ignite and supports prior art and opposition work. Darwin Axiom, which analyses and summarises legal documents, uses the same account, team and AI configuration as the others. Each system still needs its own subscription, chosen by the account's administrators in Subscriptions.

Darwin 5.1 is Techframe's established client-server IP management system, installed and used by many firms for their daily work long before the web systems of Darwin Suite existed. It remains in use, and a firm that runs Darwin 5.1 does not have to abandon it to benefit from the suite: it can keep its existing system and add web systems alongside it. Darwin Lightbox, in fact, was first offered to Darwin 5.1 customers, so that their clients could consult and annotate their portfolios on the web; depending on the provider's configuration, Lightbox can be fed from Darwin 5.1 in the same way as from Darwin Ignite, and the Brand Owner plan of Lightbox includes an option for integration with Darwin 5.1 or Darwin Ignite. For firms that choose to move their work to Darwin Ignite, the path has been prepared: the Upload portfolio wizards and the spreadsheet loader bring cases into an Ignite account, and the OIL document generator converts Darwin 5.1 letter templates automatically, using over 650 known placeholder mappings and marking in red anything it cannot resolve so that you can finish it by hand. If you are a Darwin 5.1 customer considering the suite, the sales team can explain the options that suit your firm.

Yes. Darwin Suite is designed so that one account, with one team, can use several systems, and so that one user can belong to several accounts. To move between systems, open the user menu and use the Systems switcher; you stay signed in, and the same account, team, roles, billing, email sending accounts and AI configuration apply. Each system is subscribed separately, so the systems available to your account depend on what its administrators have chosen in Subscriptions. If you open a system for which your account has no subscription, you are enrolled in it as a Reader, with read-only access, and the account's administrators are informed so that they can decide what to do. Separately, the Accounts switcher in the same user menu lets you change the account you are working in, for example if you work for more than one firm, if a portfolio owner deals with several service providers, or if a provider serves several clients in Lightbox. The account you select determines all the data you see, and nothing from one account is visible while you are working in another. Your personal details, language and password belong to you as a user and follow you across every system and account.

The interface of Darwin Suite is available in six languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian. Each user chooses their own language in Profile, under Personal Account, so colleagues on the same account can each work in the language they prefer, and the choice applies in every system of the suite. The language you choose changes the menus, screens, messages and explanations, including the plain-language help shown beside dashboard headings and the content of the Help Centre. The data you record, such as case titles, descriptions and annotations, stays as it was written. Beyond the interface, the suite is built for multilingual work. In Darwin Ignite, letter templates are kept per language and the document generator always takes the language of the recipient into account when it proposes a template, so a client receives correspondence in their own language, with dates written out in full in that language. When an incoming document is registered, the summary is produced in the reader's language whatever language the original was written in, while a drafted reply follows the language of the document being answered. Translations of new template descriptions are also prepared with the account's own AI configuration.

Darwin Suite is a family of five systems, and each is subscribed separately with plans designed for the people who use it:

• Darwin Ignite, IP management for those who manage IP cases: Free, Core, Prime and Corporate.
• Darwin Lightbox, consultation and annotation between owners and their agents: LawFirm and BrandOwner.
• Darwin Axiom, AI analysis and production of IP and legal documents: Prime and Corporate.
• Darwin GSE, trade mark search by image, sound and meaning: Free, Core and Prime.
• Darwin Genius, originality screening for creatives: Free, Core and Prime.

Within each system, every plan includes everything in the plan below it. The differences are scale (users, cases, documents, storage, accounts), allowances (credits, AI tokens, digital signatures) and capability. All systems share one sign-in and one account, so you can subscribe to one and add others whenever you need them. The current offer for each system is in Profile > Subscriptions, where the Features Matrix compares the plans.

Yes. Darwin Suite is designed so that one account, with one team, can use several systems, and so that one user can belong to several accounts. To move between systems, open the user menu and use the Systems switcher; you stay signed in, and the same account, team, roles, billing, email sending accounts and AI configuration apply. Each system is subscribed separately, so the systems available to your account depend on what its administrators have chosen in Subscriptions. If you open a system for which your account has no subscription, you are enrolled in it as a Reader, with read-only access, and the account's administrators are informed so that they can decide what to do. Separately, the Accounts switcher in the same user menu lets you change the account you are working in, for example if you work for more than one firm, if a portfolio owner deals with several service providers, or if a provider serves several clients in Lightbox. The account you select determines all the data you see, and nothing from one account is visible while you are working in another. Your personal details, language and password belong to you as a user and follow you across every system and account.

Yes. Every paid plan of every Darwin Suite system can be paid monthly or yearly. You choose the cycle in Profile > Subscriptions, where the Monthly Billing and Yearly Billing views show the plans for each. Paying yearly saves the equivalent of two months compared with paying monthly over the same twelve months. It suits organisations that know they will use the plan for the whole year, while monthly payment keeps you flexible while you are getting started.

If you are already subscribed, Switch to Yearly or Switch to Monthly changes the cycle, and the screen tells you when the new cycle starts and renews before you confirm. Free plans have no charge in either cycle. Gold credits and digital signatures are not part of the cycle: they are bought once, as needed, and never expire.

An Admin of the account changes the plan of any system in Profile > Subscriptions, and the screen explains exactly what will happen before you confirm. A move to a higher plan starts at once: the difference for the rest of the current period is charged pro rata, using the remaining credit of your previous subscription. A move to a lower plan keeps the features of the current plan until the end of the period already paid, and the new plan is charged from then on.

Only one change can be pending at a time. New features reach your session the next time you sign in. Before moving down, check that your account fits the lower plan's limits, such as the number of users, cases, documents, accounts or watched jurisdictions. For Corporate plans, Axiom quotes, cancellations or tailored arrangements, contact the sales team.

Credits pay for services that are charged by use rather than included outright in a plan. Silver credits come with your plan as an allowance, which depends on the system and plan you subscribe to, and are always used first. Gold credits are bought by an Admin in Profile > Billing with Purchase Credits. They are billed once, never expire, and are used only when no Silver credits are available, so your account keeps working when the allowance runs out.

Typical uses include searches and screenings in Darwin GSE and Darwin Genius beyond your allowance, imports of IP cases from official institutes beyond the free loads in your Darwin Ignite plan, and expert analyses authenticated by a person. Credits belong to the account, not to the user, and are shared by every Darwin Suite system the account uses. In Darwin Axiom, usage is counted in AI tokens included in the plan.

Digital signatures are units your account uses to certify documents, reports or analyses, so that recipients can be confident that what they received has not been altered since it was issued, even if they can edit PDFs. Each certification uses one signature, and only when you ask for it. Several plans include a free monthly allowance, for example 200, 2,000 and 5,000 a month on the Core, Prime and Corporate plans of Darwin Ignite.

When you need more, an Admin buys them in Profile > Billing with Purchase Signatures, in packs of 200, 2,000 or 5,000. They are added to the account straight away, never expire, and are shared by every Darwin Suite system the account uses.

Payment methods are managed by an Admin in Profile > Billing, under Payment Details. You can register several payment cards and choose a default one, pay with PayPal, or, where your account has one, use a Current Account that shows every movement with its invoice. Billing also shows the account's Cash Account and Credits Account and lets you add funds. Make sure your company's location and tax number are correct in Company Account, as they can affect the tax on your invoices. Billing is shared by every Darwin Suite system the account uses.

Prices are set in euros and are the same in every country. At checkout you can pay in EUR, GBP, USD, AUD, BRL, CAD, CHF, HKD, JPY, NOK or SEK. Taxes are added where applicable, according to your company's location and tax number.

Darwin Suite uses one federated single sign-on, shared by every Techframe system. You have one user identity, an email address and a password, and it gives you access to Darwin Ignite, Darwin Lightbox and the other systems of the suite. There is no separate password to create or remember for each system, and if you change or reset your password, the new one applies everywhere. When you sign in, you work within an account, and the account you have selected scopes all the data you see: one user can belong to several accounts, for example a professional working for more than one firm or a brand owner dealing with several providers. Once signed in, you move between systems with the Systems switcher and between accounts with the Accounts switcher, both in the user menu, without signing in again. Your role, Admin, Contributor or Reader, is set per account, so you may have different permissions in different accounts. If you have turned on two-step sign in, the authenticator code is requested as part of the same single sign-on, so the extra protection covers every system at once. For security, the account is always taken from your authenticated session and never from the address shown in your browser.

Protection in Darwin Suite works at several levels. All traffic between your browser and the services travels over HTTPS, encrypted with TLS; any attempt to use plain HTTP is redirected, and browsers are instructed to refuse unencrypted connections in future, a mechanism known as HSTS. Only approved application addresses are allowed to call the services, so other websites cannot use your session to reach your data. Sensitive credentials that you store, such as the passwords of the mailboxes used to send documents and the API keys of AI providers, are encrypted with AES-GCM and are never displayed again once saved. Access inside each account is role-based: Admins, Contributors and Readers each see and do only what their role allows. The account whose data you see is always taken from your authenticated session, never from the address bar, so nobody can reach another account's information by editing a URL. You can add two-step sign in with an authenticator app for extra protection of your own access. Beyond the application, Techframe's published security statement covers backups, audit trails, incident response and confidentiality agreements signed by its staff, and the suite adheres to the GDPR. Keeping your password private, enabling two-step sign in and reviewing who belongs to your team are the most useful things you can add yourself.

Yes, and it is recommended, especially if you handle client or portfolio information. Two-step sign in adds a second check to your password: after entering your email address and password, you type a short code generated by an authenticator app on your phone, so someone who learns your password still cannot get in without your device. To turn it on, open your Profile, go to Security and use the Two-step sign in option; you link your authenticator app by following the instructions on screen, and from your next sign-in the code is requested every time. Because Darwin Suite has a single sign-on, the protection covers every system you use, Darwin Ignite, Darwin Lightbox and the others, at once. The same Security panel is where you change your password. Passwords must have at least 8 characters and include a letter, a number and a special character, and for your protection a password can be changed at most twice in 24 hours. If you forget your password, the Forgot password link on the sign-in page sends you a reset email, but the two-step code is still required afterwards, so keep your authenticator app available. Two-step sign in is a personal setting, so each member of your team needs to turn it on for themselves.

Only the members of your account can see its information, and each of them only according to their role. Admins can read and modify data and manage users and configuration, Contributors can read and modify, and Readers can only read; some panels, such as Company Account, Billing and the report layout, are reserved for Admins. People join an account only by invitation or by a request that the Admins approve, and Admins can change roles or remove users from the Team panel at any time. The account you are working in is always taken from your authenticated session, never from the address in your browser, so other accounts cannot reach your data by changing a URL, and you cannot reach theirs. In Darwin Lightbox, each Lightbox account receives only the cases its service provider has synchronised to it, so one client never sees another client's portfolio, and annotations marked Private stay within the account that wrote them. Where the Darwin Ignite dashboard compares a practice with similar practices, the comparison is an average calculated inside the database: no other practice's figures are shown, the number of practices in the group is never displayed, and no comparison appears at all if there is no genuine peer group. Techframe staff are bound by confidentiality agreements under its security statement.

Darwin Suite adheres to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The data controller is Techframe – Sistemas de Informação, SA, and questions about personal data can be sent to its data protection contact at dataprotectionoffice@techframe.pt with the subject "GDPR consultation". This is the address to use if you wish to exercise your rights under the GDPR, such as access to, rectification of or erasure of your personal data. IP work inevitably involves personal data, such as the names and contact details of applicants, agents and their contacts, so the suite builds data protection into the steps where it matters. When a portfolio is loaded into Darwin Ignite through the Upload portfolio wizards, you are asked for a GDPR approval before the processes are loaded, confirming that you are entitled to process the personal data they contain. Access to information is limited to the members of each account according to their roles, and the account is always taken from the authenticated session. Stored credentials are encrypted, traffic is encrypted in transit, and Techframe's published security statement covers backups, audit trails, incident response and staff confidentiality agreements. When AI features are used, they run with your account's own chosen provider and keys, so you decide which provider processes that content.

Artificial intelligence in Darwin Suite helps with tasks such as reading incoming documents and proposing their classification, sender, summary, deadlines and related cases, drafting replies, describing and translating new letter templates, the trade mark and logo searching of Darwin GSE and the document analysis of Darwin Axiom. Every AI feature uses your account's own choice of provider and model and your account's own API keys, which an Admin sets in Profile under API Keys & Models. You can choose between Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini or Darwin's own service, and pick the model per use. Content is sent only to the provider you have chosen, under your own key; nothing goes into a shared pool. The keys are encrypted when saved and never displayed again. Every call is metered and recorded, and in Darwin Ignite the Artificial intelligence tab of the Dashboard shows the spend by day, by supplier, by tier and by feature; for Anthropic, Gemini and OpenAI these figures are estimates, and the provider's own console remains the authority for billing. The AI proposes and a person confirms: nothing it suggests is registered or sent until a user has reviewed it, and drafted replies are never saved or sent automatically. Dashboards themselves do not use AI; their figures are calculated directly from your data.

Every system of Darwin Suite has a Help Centre, available from the menu, and it is the best place to start. It offers four kinds of help. FAQs answer the most common questions; you can search them by word, and the "Most frequently asked" list is ordered by how often each answer is opened by users. Tutorials are short videos, typically between one and a half and three minutes long, organised by category, that show a task from start to finish. Contact support lets you write to the support team, with an attachment if a screenshot or file helps explain the problem. Support Tickets lists the requests you have opened and lets you follow their progress. Help is also built into the screens themselves: in Darwin Ignite, each heading on the Dashboard has a question mark that opens a plain-language explanation of what the figure means and what it does not mean. Where it is available, the quick chat in the header includes ARIA, the AI assistant, alongside Team Chat for messages to your colleagues and System Notifications. For questions about your account's configuration or permissions, your account's Admin is often the quickest answer, and in Darwin Lightbox questions about the content of a case are best addressed to your service provider.

To open a ticket, go to the Help Centre and choose Contact support. Fill in your name, your email address, a subject and a message describing the problem, and attach a file of up to 20 MB if it helps, such as a screenshot of the error or the document involved. A clear subject, the screen you were on, what you did and what you expected make the answer quicker. Once sent, your request is registered and the support team will get back to you within 24 hours. You can follow it in Support Tickets, also in the Help Centre, where each ticket shows its System, Account, User, Subject, Assigned To, Type, Level and Status, so you can see who is dealing with it, how it has been classified and where it stands. When the team needs more information from you, answering promptly keeps the ticket moving. Response times in the support indicators are counted in working hours, from 09:00 to 18:00 GMT, Monday to Friday, and the time a ticket spends waiting for the client's reply is excluded, so the measure reflects the time Techframe actually takes. If your organisation has a service level agreement with Techframe, the response terms of that contract apply.

Training for Darwin Suite is offered in several forms, so you can choose what suits you and your team. The quickest is the Tutorials section of each system's Help Centre: short videos, usually between one and a half and three minutes, organised by category. They cover both technical topics, such as signing in for the first time, navigating, consulting the portfolio, entities and contacts, synchronisation, annotations, list views and layouts, reports and troubleshooting, and business topics, such as visibility of the portfolio, using a system as a companion to existing ones, sharing information across teams, client and internal reviews, and access and security. Beyond the videos, Techframe provides webinars and workshops, as well as self-paced courses that you follow at your own rhythm and blended courses that combine self-study with sessions led by a trainer. These are brought together in the Darwin Suite Learning Hub. Training can be particularly useful when a team starts using a new system, when a firm moves its work from Darwin 5.1 to Darwin Ignite, or when new colleagues join an account. To arrange a webinar, workshop or course for your organisation, or to ask about tailored sessions, contact the Techframe team through Contact support or the sales contacts.

For technical questions and problems, please start in the Help Centre with Contact support or Support Tickets, as your request is then recorded and can be followed. For everything else, you can reach Techframe – Sistemas de Informação, SA directly. The headquarters and support centre is at Rua José Dias Simão 220, 2200-062 Abrantes, Portugal, telephone +351 241 330 330. The Lisbon area office is at Rua Almeida Garrett 83 A, Buzano, 2785-338 São Domingos de Rana, Portugal, telephone +351 214 584 160. The Madrid office is at C/ Fuente del Berro 20, 1º B, 28009 Madrid, Spain, telephone +34 917 702 231. General enquiries can be sent to info@techframe.pt and marketing matters to marketing@techframe.pt. For plans, prices and commercial proposals, speak to the sales team: Pedro Lima looks after the Portuguese-speaking markets and Franck Monteiro looks after Brazil and Latin America, both from Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 13:00 and 14:00 to 18:00, Portugal time. Questions about personal data and the GDPR should go to dataprotectionoffice@techframe.pt with the subject "GDPR consultation". More information about the suite is available at www.darwinsuite.com.