Darwin Lightbox

Darwin Lightbox is the IPCAS of Darwin Suite, a consultation and annotation system that supports the interaction and information sharing between IP portfolio owners and their service providers. It gives you a lighter web interface where you can consult, review and annotate the information about your trade marks, patents, designs and other rights, the entities linked to them and, where your provider shares them, your court cases, without having to work inside the full operational system your provider uses. The cases you see are a copy synchronised from your provider's system, which is Darwin Ignite or, depending on your provider's configuration, Darwin 5.1, so the record itself stays with the people who manage it. On top of that copy you can read each case's general data, history, documents and theoretical life cycle, follow the Performance Dashboard that monitors the activity and performance of your portfolio, request reports, and add annotations to record instructions, questions and decisions. Lightbox is developed by Techframe and runs on the same platform as the rest of Darwin Suite, so you sign in with the same email and password, manage your profile and team in the same way and find the same Help Centre.

Lightbox is designed for two sides of the same relationship. On one side are IP portfolio owners: brand owners, companies of any size and in-house IP or legal teams who need to know the state of their rights at any moment but do not run the day-to-day prosecution and maintenance themselves. On the other side are IP service providers, such as IP agents, attorneys, law firms and IP agencies, who manage those portfolios in their own system and want to give their clients a reliable window onto the work instead of answering each status request separately. Lightbox also suits people inside an organisation who need to consult the portfolio without operating it, for example marketing, product, management or finance colleagues who want to check where a mark is protected or when a right falls due for renewal. Because each user is given a role, an account can include people who only read, people who also write annotations and administrators who manage the team. There are plans for both sides: the Law Firm plan, subscribed by a service provider to serve its clients, and the Brand Owner plan, subscribed by a portfolio owner to work with its providers.

Without a shared tool, information about an IP portfolio usually travels by email: the owner asks for the status of a case, the provider looks it up and replies, spreadsheets are exchanged and periodic reports are out of date almost as soon as they are sent. Different people end up working from different versions, and the reasons behind past decisions are scattered across mailboxes. Lightbox replaces much of that exchange with one shared source of information. The cases your provider manages for you are synchronised to your Lightbox account, so you can look up a filing date, a status, the next deadline, the history of acts or a document yourself, at any time, instead of waiting for a reply. Annotations keep instructions, questions and decisions attached to the case they concern, with their author and date, so the context is not lost when people change. The Performance Dashboard and the reports give you an overview of the portfolio for reviews and meetings. The result is fewer routine requests for your provider, quicker answers for you and a common, documented basis for the conversations you still need to have.

In Lightbox you can search and consult the cases synchronised to your account, opening each one to read its general data, annotations, history in the Evolution tab and documents, view its theoretical life cycle, follow the link to the official register of the IP office and move to the previous or next case in your results. You can also consult the entities linked to your cases and, where your provider shares them, court cases. You can add annotations to a case, marking them Private when they are for your own account only, provided your role allows it. You can follow the Performance Dashboard, request and consult reports, manage your own profile and, if you are an Admin, your account's team. What you cannot do is change the underlying data: case, entity and court case records are read-only, so there is no Edit, Delete or Save, and you cannot create new cases, load portfolios, run watches or generate letters and documents. Those tasks belong to your service provider, who carries them out in their own system; the changes then reach Lightbox at the next synchronisation. If something needs correcting or doing, record it in an annotation or contact your provider.

IPCAS stands for IP Consultation and Annotation System, which is how Techframe describes Darwin Lightbox. Each part of the name describes what you do with it. IP refers to the intellectual property rights at the centre of the relationship between you and your service provider: trade marks, patents, designs and other rights, together with the parties and, where shared, the court cases around them. Consultation means that Lightbox is a place to look things up rather than to operate: you search the portfolio, open cases and entities, read their history and documents, see their life cycle and follow the dashboard and reports, but the records themselves are kept and changed by your provider. Annotation means that you are not only a reader: you can attach notes to a case to give instructions, ask questions or record decisions, each with its author and date, and you can keep some of them private to your own account. System reflects that this is a structured, shared environment with users, roles and security, not a set of files sent back and forth. Together, consultation and annotation are what support the interaction and information sharing between portfolio owners and service providers.

No. Lightbox is a companion to an IP management system, not a substitute for it. The system your service provider uses to manage your portfolio, Darwin Ignite or, depending on your provider's configuration, Darwin 5.1, remains the master record: that is where cases are created and updated, deadlines are controlled, official bulletins are monitored, incoming documents are registered and letters are produced. Lightbox receives a copy of the cases synchronised to your account and gives you web access to it, with the ability to add annotations, without asking anyone to change the way they already work. If your provider already uses one of these systems, Lightbox simply adds a window for you on top of it. If your company wants to manage its own portfolio operationally rather than consult what a provider manages, that is the role of a full IP management system such as Darwin Ignite, which can be used with the same sign-in; Lightbox would then remain the place where you share information with your providers. Either way, the operational work and the consultation layer are kept apart, which is what lets each side use the tool that suits it.

The information in Lightbox comes from your service provider's IP management system. The usual source is Darwin Ignite, Techframe's web IP management system for agents, attorneys and law firms: in Ignite, your provider opens the entity that represents you, for example your company as applicant, and on its Lightbox tab sets up a synchronisation that sends the cases where that entity has a given role to your Lightbox account. Lightbox was first offered to customers of Darwin 5.1, Techframe's established client-server IP management system, and users of Darwin 5.1 can be served through the same model, depending on your provider's configuration. In every case, what you see in Lightbox is a copy of the synchronised cases, their parties, classes, history and the documents shared with you; you never have access to the provider's own database, and you only receive the cases synchronised to your account. If you work with several providers, each of them can feed its own Lightbox account, and you can move between those accounts from the Accounts menu. Lightbox does not collect data directly from IP offices; it shows what your provider's system holds, including the link to the official register for each case.

Darwin Ignite is an operational system and Lightbox is a consultation system. Ignite is used by IP service providers, such as agents, attorneys and law firms, to run their practice: they create and edit IP cases, manage entities and court cases, control deadlines, monitor bulletins in the Watch Section and Publication List, handle viability requests, register incoming documents, generate letters with OIL, load portfolios and follow a dashboard about the performance of the practice. Lightbox is used mainly by portfolio owners, and by providers when they want to offer their clients a shared view: it shows a read-only copy of the cases synchronised to the account, lets you add annotations, request reports and follow a Performance Dashboard about the portfolio itself, with Coverage, Vitality and Conflictuality, Portfolio Stratification and World Coverage. Both systems run on the same Darwin Suite platform, so the sign-in, the profile, the team, the roles and the Help Centre work in the same way, but they have their own branding, address and subscriptions. In short, Ignite is where the work is done, and Lightbox is where the people who own the rights can see it and comment on it.

First make sure the right account is selected in the Accounts menu, since each account has its own portfolio. Then open the portfolio search from the side menu and use the filters to find the case: the quickest way is usually your reference or the application or registration number, but you can also search by title, owner, jurisdiction, class or status. Run the search and the matching cases appear in a results grid, or in Table View if you prefer columns. Click a case to open its detail page. The page is organised in tabs: General, with the essential data such as dates, parties, classes, status and next deadline; Annotations, with the notes added to the case; Evolution, with the history of acts; and Documents, with the documents shared with you. From the General tab you can also show the life cycle graph, which displays the theoretical life cycle of the right, and follow the link to the official register of the IP office. Use Previous and Next to move through the cases in your results without going back to the list. Everything on the page is read-only, except that you can add annotations if your role allows it.

A case detail page brings together what your service provider's system holds about one right, organised in tabs. General shows the essential data: the type of right and its title or wording, the jurisdiction, references and official numbers, the key dates such as filing, publication, registration or grant and renewal, the current status and the next deadline, the parties involved, such as the applicant or holder, the representative and the case responsible, the classes, namely Nice for goods and services, Vienna for figurative elements and Locarno for designs, together with descriptions and, where available, the image of the mark or design. From General you can show the life cycle graph and open the case in the official register of the IP office. Annotations holds the notes written on the case by you, your colleagues or, where shared, your provider, each with its author and date. Evolution lists the history of the case, with the acts carried out and those still pending. Documents gives you the documents synchronised for the case. All of it is a read-only copy; what each tab contains depends on what your provider records and shares.

Because the case data in Lightbox is a read-only copy of the record kept by your service provider. The provider is responsible for the legal management of your rights: they file, respond to the IP offices, record acts, control deadlines and keep the official data in their own system, Darwin Ignite or, depending on their configuration, Darwin 5.1. If the copy in Lightbox could be edited, there would soon be two versions of the truth, and a change typed in Lightbox would not reach the office or the provider's deadline control. That is why there is no Edit, Delete or Save on cases, entities or court cases. If you notice something that seems wrong or out of date, such as a misspelt name, a missing class or a status you do not recognise, add an annotation to the case describing what should change, so the request stays attached to the right record with your name and the date, or contact your provider directly if it is urgent. Once your provider corrects the record in their system, the correction reaches Lightbox at the next synchronisation. Annotations are the one thing you can add, provided your role allows it.

Open the case and go to its Documents tab. It lists the documents your service provider has synchronised for that case, such as official notifications, certificates, correspondence or reports, usually with their date, type and description so you can find the one you need. Select a document to open it: where the format allows, such as PDFs, images and emails, it is shown directly in the browser, without needing any other program. Which documents appear depends on what your provider registers against the case in their system and chooses to share with your Lightbox account; documents kept private on the provider's side, or not yet registered, are not shown. Like the rest of the case, the documents are a copy, so you cannot replace or delete them, and new ones arrive at the next synchronisation. If you expect a document that is not there, for example a registration certificate or an office action you were told about, add an annotation to the case asking for it or contact your provider. Remember also the Evolution tab, which records the acts that documents usually relate to, and the reports, which summarise information across the portfolio.

Open the case and go to its Evolution tab. It lists the acts recorded on the case in date order, from filing onwards: for example publication, oppositions or office actions and the responses to them, registration or grant, renewals or annuities, changes of ownership or representation, and any other steps your provider records. Together they tell the story of the right and explain how it reached its current status, which is shown on the General tab. The Evolution tab also shows acts that are still pending, that is, steps expected or due but not yet carried out. These matter, because the next deadline shown on the case takes them into account together with the case's next valid date. To understand where the case should go next, combine the Evolution tab with the life cycle graph, which shows the theoretical path of that type of right in that jurisdiction and where your case stands on it. The history is a read-only copy of your provider's record and is updated at each synchronisation. If an act you know about is missing, or you would like an explanation of one, add an annotation to the case or ask your service provider.

Each case shows its next deadline on the General tab. It is calculated by combining the case's next valid date, such as the renewal date of a trade mark or design or the due date of a patent annuity, with the acts still pending in its history, so that a pending response to an office or another outstanding step is taken into account and the earliest relevant date is shown. As a deadline approaches, it is highlighted in colour so that it stands out. To see the reason for a deadline, look at the Evolution tab, which lists the pending acts, and at the life cycle graph, which shows the step the case has reached and what comes next. To review deadlines across the portfolio, use the search with status and date-related filters, Table View to compare dates side by side, or a report. Bear in mind that Lightbox shows deadlines but does not act on them: it does not instruct your provider or renew anything automatically. If you want a right to be renewed, a response filed or a case abandoned, give your instruction to your provider, record it in an annotation so the decision stays with the case, and confirm with them in good time before the date.

On the General tab of a case, choose Show lifecycle graph to see the theoretical life cycle of the right. It is a diagram of the path that this type of right normally follows in its jurisdiction, from filing through examination, publication, possible opposition, registration or grant, and then maintenance and renewal. The graph is made of states, the stages the right can be in, and conditions, the questions that decide which way it goes next, for example whether an opposition was filed; the legend explains how conditions met and not met are shown, and the steps carry the typical time between them in days, months or years. The step your case has reached is marked, together with the date of the previous step, so you can see where it stands and what may come next. This makes the graph a good way to understand a status you are not familiar with, or to explain the process to a colleague. Remember that it is theoretical: it describes the usual path, not a promise about your case, and real cases can take other turns. If no life cycle has been defined for that type of right and jurisdiction, the graph says so; ask your provider for the detail.

Yes, where the IP office offers an online register and the case has the references it needs. On the case detail page, use the link to the official register to open the record of that application or registration on the website of the office concerned, in a new browser tab. This lets you compare the information your provider has recorded with what the office publishes, consult details the office makes public, such as the full publication text, and show third parties the official source. The availability and content of the official register depend on each office, so some jurisdictions offer more detail than others, and occasionally an office's site may be slow or unavailable, which is outside Lightbox's control. Lightbox does not change anything at the office; it simply takes you there. When you have finished, return to the Lightbox tab, where Previous and Next let you move to the other cases of your search results without going back to the list, which is useful when you are checking several cases in turn. If the office shows something that differs from the case in Lightbox, let your provider know with an annotation on the case.

You can consult every type of right that your service provider manages for you and synchronises to your Lightbox account. Typically this includes trade marks, whether word, figurative or other kinds of sign, with their Nice classes for goods and services and, where relevant, Vienna classes for figurative elements and an image of the mark; patents and similar rights for inventions, with their annuities; and designs, with their Locarno classes and images. Depending on what your provider handles, it can also include other industrial property rights recorded in their system. Each type is shown with the information relevant to it and has its own theoretical life cycle in each jurisdiction. Besides the rights themselves, you can consult the entities linked to your cases, such as holders and representatives, and, depending on your provider's configuration, court cases about your rights. What you see is decided by the synchronisation your provider sets up: it sends the cases where the entity that represents you has a given role, for example applicant. If a whole category of rights you expect is missing, ask your provider whether it is included in the synchronisation.

Yes, depending on your provider's configuration. Where your service provider manages litigation for you and shares it with your Lightbox account, you can consult the court case records from the menu. Each record brings together the essential information about the proceedings: the court and the judge, the process codes that identify the case, the next action expected, the relevant dates, the entities involved, such as the parties and their representatives, and a timeline of what has happened so far. The record is organised in tabs: General Data with those details, Evolution with the history of steps, and Documents with the documents shared for the case. As with IP cases, court cases are a read-only copy of your provider's record, so you cannot edit or delete them, and changes reach Lightbox at the next synchronisation. Court cases help you follow disputes over your rights, such as infringement actions or appeals against office decisions, alongside the portfolio itself, and they are often the background to the Conflictuality indicator on the dashboard. If you expect to see a court case and it is not listed, ask your provider whether court cases are included in what they share with you.

For a structured document, request a report: reports can be produced in PDF, for reading, printing and circulating, or in Excel, for further analysis, and you choose their title, language and, where available, the period and classes they cover; which reports are offered depends on your account's configuration. Reports are prepared in the background and appear in your report list when ready. For a quick printout of what is on screen, such as a case page or a list of search results, you can use your browser's print function, which also lets you save the page as a PDF. When the aim is to share information with colleagues, however, the better route is usually to invite them to your Lightbox account from Profile > Team with a suitable role, for example Reader for people who only need to consult. They then see the same, up-to-date information as you, instead of a copy that starts ageing the moment it is sent, they can read the annotations in context, and access can be withdrawn when it is no longer needed. Before forwarding reports or printouts outside your organisation, remember that they may contain personal data about parties and contacts.

The Performance Dashboard monitors your activity and the performance of your portfolio, giving you an overview without opening cases one by one. At the top are three cards. Coverage is about how far your portfolio protects your rights over the period. Vitality is about the activity in the portfolio, such as new filings, renewals and other movements. Conflictuality is about how much of the portfolio is drawing oppositions or disputes. Each card can be read over the last 30 days, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months, so you can see both recent movement and the longer trend. Below the cards, the Portfolio Stratification chart is a radar that compares This Year with Last Year and shows new tasks against completed tasks, giving you a sense of how the work on your portfolio is distributed and progressing. The World Coverage map shows the jurisdictions where your portfolio has rights, helping you see at a glance where you are protected and where there may be gaps. The figures are prepared in advance from the cases synchronised to your account, so the dashboard opens quickly but does not change the instant a case is updated. On a new account it fills in once the initial load has completed.

Coverage is about how much of your portfolio is actually giving you protection during the period you have chosen. In broad terms, it looks at your rights as recorded in the cases synchronised to your account and reflects the extent to which they are in force and covering you, as opposed to being still pending, lapsed, refused or abandoned. A healthy Coverage means that a large part of what you have filed is protecting you; a falling Coverage over the months is a prompt to ask why, for example whether renewals have been allowed to lapse on purpose, applications are still waiting for a decision, or rights were refused in some jurisdictions. Read it over 30 days, 3, 6 or 12 months to tell a short-term change from a lasting trend. Coverage is an indicator, not a legal opinion: it is only as complete as the information your provider's system holds and has synchronised to Lightbox, and it does not tell you whether the protection is adequate for your business. Combine it with the World Coverage map, which shows where you hold rights, and with the detail of individual cases, and discuss any surprise with your service provider.

Vitality is about the activity in your portfolio during the period you have chosen. It reflects how much is happening to your rights: new filings, renewals, and other movements recorded in the history of your cases, such as steps in prosecution, grants and changes of status. A portfolio with high Vitality is being actively developed and maintained; one with low Vitality is mostly static, which may simply mean that it is mature and stable, or may deserve a question if you expected new filings or renewals to be under way. The card may indicate whether the movement is positive or negative for the period, helping you see whether the portfolio is growing or contracting. Read it over 30 days, 3, 6 or 12 months: a short window shows recent bursts of work, such as a filing campaign, while a long window shows the underlying trend. Like every dashboard indicator, Vitality is based on the cases synchronised to your account from your provider's system, so activity that has not yet been recorded there does not appear. It is a starting point for questions, which you can then explore in the Evolution tab of individual cases or raise with your service provider.

Conflictuality is about how much of your portfolio is involved in disputes during the period you have chosen. It reflects the rights that are drawing oppositions, objections or other contentious proceedings, whether brought by third parties against your applications and registrations or brought on your behalf against others, as recorded in the cases synchronised to your account. A low Conflictuality suggests a portfolio that is moving through registration and maintenance without much resistance; a rising one can point to a crowded market, a new competitor, a sign or jurisdiction that attracts objections, or a deliberate enforcement effort on your side. Read it over 30 days, 3, 6 or 12 months to see whether a peak is a one-off or a trend. Conflictuality does not judge the merits of any dispute, and it only knows what your provider's system has recorded and synchronised to Lightbox. To understand a change, search for the cases concerned, look at their status and the Evolution tab, consult any court cases your provider shares with you, and use annotations or a conversation with your service provider to agree on the response.

Portfolio Stratification is a radar chart, a web of axes radiating from a centre, each axis standing for one segment of your portfolio. The further a line reaches along an axis, the more activity there is in that segment. The chart lets you compare two things at once. First, This Year against Last Year: you can show one or both periods and see whether the shape has grown, shrunk or shifted, for example more work in one type of right and less in another. Second, new tasks against completed tasks: new tasks show work that has arisen in your portfolio, such as filings, renewals or other acts to be done, while completed tasks show work that has been carried out. Where the two lines are close, the work arising is being dealt with; where new tasks clearly outweigh completed ones in a segment, work is accumulating there, which may be expected, such as a renewal season, or may be worth raising with your provider. Read the overall shape rather than individual points. Like the rest of the dashboard, it is based on the cases synchronised to your account and is prepared in advance rather than updated live.

The World Coverage map shows the jurisdictions where your portfolio has rights, based on the cases synchronised to your account. Countries and territories where you hold rights are shaded, and the intensity of the colour reflects how much of your portfolio is there, so the places where you are most heavily protected stand out immediately. The map is a quick way to answer questions that are otherwise slow to piece together from a list: in which markets am I protected, where is my protection concentrated, and, just as usefully, where are there gaps. An unshaded country where you sell, manufacture or plan to launch is a good reason to talk to your service provider about extending protection. Bear in mind that the map shows where rights exist in your synchronised portfolio, not their strength or scope, and that it is a current picture rather than a history. For the cases behind a jurisdiction, search your portfolio with that jurisdiction as a filter.

The Coverage, Vitality and Conflictuality cards let you choose the window of time they cover: the last 30 days, 3 months, 6 months or 12 months, counting back from the date the figures were prepared. Select an option on the card and its figure is shown for that window. Short windows are sensitive: the 30 days view shows what has just happened, such as a filing campaign, a renewal deadline or a new opposition, but a single event can move it noticeably, especially in a small portfolio. Long windows are steadier: the 12 months view smooths out peaks and shows the underlying direction of the portfolio. Switching between windows is therefore a simple way to compare recent movement with the longer trend; a 30 days figure very different from the 12 months one tells you that something has changed recently. The figures are prepared in advance and refreshed periodically from the cases synchronised to your account, which is why the dashboard opens quickly but does not react the instant a case changes in your provider's system. On a new account, or right after the initial load, some windows may have little or nothing to show until there is enough history.

Annotations are the notes you attach to a case in Lightbox, and they are the one part of a case that you add yourself rather than receive from your service provider. While the case data (dates, parties, classes, status and history) is a read-only copy of your provider's record, the Annotations tab lets you write down what matters to you about that right: an instruction you want to give, a decision your company has taken, a question for your provider, a commercial note about the product the trade mark protects, or a reminder for a colleague. Each annotation keeps its author and its date, so anyone reading it later knows who wrote it and when, and the list on the tab builds up into a running record of the thinking behind the case. An annotation can be marked Private, which keeps it within your own account; otherwise it can be shared with the other party where the synchronisation is configured to do so. Annotations do not change the official data of the case: if a date or a party is wrong, the correction has to be made by your provider in their system, and an annotation is a good way of telling them so. Whether you can add annotations, and not only read them, depends on your role in the account.

Open the case from your portfolio search and go to its Annotations tab, where you will see the notes already written on that case with their date, user and text. Choose New Annotation, write your text in the Annotation field, which is required, and tick Private if the note is for your own organisation only. Then confirm with Add annotation, or choose Go back to leave without saving. The annotation appears in the list straight away, recorded under your name and the current date. You can expand a long annotation to read it in full, and you can edit or delete the annotations you wrote yourself from the same list, using Edit and Delete; there is also an option to delete all your annotations on that case, which asks for confirmation first because it cannot be undone. Adding, editing and deleting annotations needs the Contributor or Admin role in your Lightbox account: a Reader can consult annotations but not write them. If you cannot see the New Annotation option, ask an Admin of your account to review your role in Profile > Team. Keep in mind that writing an annotation does not, by itself, alert anyone; if something needs action from your provider, agree with them how they will pick up your annotations or contact them as well.

A private annotation is a note on a case that stays inside your own account. When you add or edit an annotation you can tick Private; the note is then visible only to the members of your Lightbox account, according to their roles, and is not shared with your service provider or with any other party, whatever the synchronisation between your account and the provider's system is set up to do. Use private annotations for internal deliberations that should not leave your organisation: a discussion about whether a mark is still commercially worth renewing, budget considerations, the view of your marketing team on a new filing, or a note to a colleague about who should decide. Annotations that are not marked Private can be shared with the other party where the synchronisation is configured for it, which makes them the natural place for instructions and questions you want your provider to see. If you are unsure which way a note should go, mark it Private first: you can edit it later and remove the mark once you are ready to share it, whereas a note already seen by the other party cannot be taken back. The Private mark is shown in the annotation list, so you can always tell which notes are internal.

Your annotations are never public. Every annotation you write can be read by the members of your Lightbox account, within what their role allows: Admins, Contributors and Readers can all consult them, while only Contributors and Admins can write them. A private annotation goes no further than that. An annotation that is not marked Private can, in addition, be shared with the other party of the relationship, normally your service provider, where the synchronisation between your Lightbox account and their system is configured to carry annotations; whether and how that happens depends on your plan and on your provider's configuration, so if it matters to you, confirm it with your provider. Annotations are never shown to other clients of your provider, because each Lightbox account only receives the cases synchronised to it, and nobody can reach another account's data by changing the address in the browser, since the account is always taken from the signed-in session. Each annotation shows its author and date, so readers know who wrote it. If someone leaves your organisation, removing them from the account in Profile > Team ends their access to your annotations as well as to the rest of the portfolio.

Annotations give you and your provider one place, attached to the case itself, for the context that usually gets scattered across email threads, meeting notes and spreadsheets. When you decide not to renew a trade mark in a country, to extend protection to a new class, or to wait before answering an office action, you can write that decision on the case, dated and signed with your name, instead of hoping that the right email is found later. Questions work the same way: a note asking why a case shows a certain status sits beside the data it refers to, so whoever answers sees exactly what you were looking at. Over time the Annotations tab becomes a history of the instructions and reasons behind each right, which is valuable when people change on either side, when you prepare a portfolio review, or when a decision taken years ago has to be explained. Where the synchronisation is configured to share annotations, your non-private notes reach your provider; private notes let you keep your internal discussion alongside without sharing it. Annotations complement rather than replace your formal instructions: for anything urgent or deadline-bound, agree with your provider how instructions are to be given and confirmed.

Good annotations are short, specific and easy to act on months later. Write one subject per annotation, so that a decision about renewal is not buried inside a note about a licence; state decisions plainly, saying what was decided, by whom and, where relevant, by when, even though the date and author are recorded automatically; and refer to the facts you are looking at, such as the status or the next deadline shown, rather than to an email the reader may not have. Decide before saving whether the note is internal: tick Private for deliberations, budgets and opinions that should stay inside your organisation, and leave it unticked only for what you are happy for the other party to read where annotations are shared. Avoid copying personal data into annotations beyond what the matter genuinely needs, in line with the GDPR: there is no need to paste a person's home address or personal telephone number into a note on a trade mark. Correct an annotation by editing it rather than adding a contradictory one, and delete notes that were written on the wrong case. Finally, remember that an annotation is not a substitute for a formal instruction on an urgent deadline: agree with your provider how those are to be given and confirmed.

The information you see in Lightbox comes from your service provider's IP management system, where your cases are actually managed, and reaches your Lightbox account by synchronisation. In Darwin Ignite, your provider opens your company's record in Entity Management and, on its Lightbox tab, adds a synchronisation that names the role your company has on the cases (for example applicant) and the Lightbox account that should receive them. From then on, the cases in which your company has that role are copied to your Lightbox account and kept up to date as your provider works on them. Your provider can add more than one such row, for instance to share cases in which you are applicant and also those in which you are the client, or to send them to different accounts. Darwin 5.1 users can be served in a similar way, depending on your provider's configuration. Apart from the initial load, whose duration depends on the size of the portfolio, setting this up takes your provider a few minutes. What you receive is a copy: you consult it in Lightbox, but you never have access to your provider's own database, and changes to case data are always made by your provider in their system and reach you at the next synchronisation.

The synchronisation brings to your Lightbox account the cases in which your company holds the role your provider has chosen, together with the information you need to consult them: the case details shown on the General tab, such as the jurisdiction, reference, application and registration numbers, title, status, the important dates and the next deadline; the parties to the case, such as the applicant or holder, the representative and the person responsible at your provider; the classifications recorded (Nice, Vienna or Locarno, as applicable); the history of acts shown on the Evolution tab; and the documents your provider shares on the case, which you find on the Documents tab. The related entities and their contacts are brought across so that you can consult them as well, and court cases may be included depending on your provider's configuration. Annotations can travel between the two sides according to how the synchronisation is configured, but private annotations always remain within the account that wrote them. Only your cases are synchronised: nothing about your provider's other clients reaches your account. If you expected to see something that is not there, such as a type of document or a group of cases, ask your provider, because what is shared is set up on their side.

Lightbox shows a copy of your provider's records that is refreshed by synchronisation, not a live view of their screen, so there can be a short interval between your provider recording a change in their system and that change appearing in your account. When a synchronisation is first set up, the initial load copies the whole portfolio and its duration depends on how many cases are involved; a large portfolio can take noticeably longer than a small one, and cases appear progressively until it is finished. After that, updates arrive as your provider works on the cases. To judge how current a case is, look at its dates and at the most recent acts on the Evolution tab, which show what was last recorded. Keep in mind too that some changes depend on official events: a grant or a publication only appears once the office has published it and your provider has recorded it. If a case looks out of date after a reasonable time, or you know of an event that is not shown, contact your provider, who can check their record and the synchronisation; an annotation on the case is a convenient way of pointing them to exactly what you mean.

When your provider uses Darwin Ignite, the synchronisation is set up on your company's own record. In Entity Management they open the entity that represents you and go to its Lightbox tab, where they add a synchronisation row with four fields: Active, which switches the row on or off; Role, the role your company has on the cases to be shared, such as applicant; Lightbox Account, the Lightbox account that will receive them, normally yours; and Comments, for their own notes about the arrangement. Once the row is active, every case in Ignite in which your entity has that role is copied to the chosen Lightbox account, and so are later changes to those cases. Several rows can coexist, for example one per role, or one per Lightbox account when a group of companies wants the cases split across different accounts. The Lightbox account itself is created beforehand, from the user menu with New account, either by your company or by your provider on your behalf, and your provider then invites your contacts to it, or your account's Admin invites colleagues. Because the rule is the role on the case, a case only appears if your company is recorded in that role on it; that is the first thing to check when a case is missing.

Yes. Lightbox was first offered to the customers of Darwin 5.1, Techframe's established client-server IP management system that many firms still use, so that their clients could consult and annotate their portfolios on the web without the firm changing the system it works in. If your provider manages your cases in Darwin 5.1, your portfolio can reach Lightbox through the same model as with Darwin Ignite: the cases in which your company has a given role are synchronised to your Lightbox account, and you consult them read-only and add annotations in exactly the same interface. The connection is configured by your provider together with Techframe, so what is shared, and how, depends on your provider's configuration. For you as a portfolio owner the experience does not depend on which system your provider uses: you sign in with the same Darwin Suite email and password, see the same screens, and use the same Help Centre. If you are a brand owner subscribing to Lightbox yourself, the Brand Owner plan includes an option that combines annotation with integration with Darwin 5.1 or Darwin Ignite; ask your provider or the Techframe sales team which arrangement applies to you.

Case, entity and court-case data cannot be changed in Lightbox, so there are no edits of that kind to send back: the record belongs to your provider's system, and any correction is made there and reaches you at the next synchronisation. What you do create in Lightbox are annotations, and they are the channel for communicating with your provider about a case. Whether your non-private annotations are carried across to your provider's system depends on the plan and on how the synchronisation is configured: the Brand Owner plan, for example, offers annotation on its own or annotation plus integration with Darwin 5.1 or Darwin Ignite. Private annotations never leave your account in any configuration. Other things you do in Lightbox, such as requesting reports, managing your team or changing your profile, stay within your own account and do not affect your provider's records. If you need your provider to change something, such as a wrong date, an outdated contact or a renewal decision, check with them whether they receive your annotations; if they do, write an annotation on the case, and if not, or if the matter is urgent, contact them directly as you normally would.

A synchronisation is controlled by your service provider: in Darwin Ignite, for instance, they switch off the Active option on the Lightbox tab of your company's entity record. Once it is stopped, no new updates reach your Lightbox account from that row: changes your provider makes afterwards to those cases are no longer copied to you, and new cases in which your company has that role are not added. Stopping one row does not affect any others, so if your provider shares cases with you under several roles, or if you work with more than one provider, the remaining synchronisations carry on. Access to your Lightbox account itself is a separate matter, managed by the Admins of your account in Profile > Team: stopping a synchronisation does not remove anybody's access, and removing a user does not stop a synchronisation. If you are changing provider, or ending a relationship, agree with your provider what should happen to the synchronisation and keep your team list up to date. If you notice that updates have stopped arriving and you did not expect it, ask your provider whether the synchronisation is still active.

No. Synchronisation copies your cases to your Lightbox account; it does not open a door into your provider's system. What you consult in Lightbox is that copy, held in your own account, and at no point does a Lightbox user have access to the provider's database, their other clients, their internal notes or the parts of their system that are not shared with you. Only the cases in which your company has the role your provider chose are sent, and they are sent to the Lightbox account your provider named, so each client of the provider receives only its own portfolio. The data travels and is displayed over encrypted connections (HTTPS), and inside Lightbox the account you see is always taken from your signed-in session, so nobody can reach another account's data by editing the address in the browser. The same protection works the other way: your private annotations stay within your account and are not shared with your provider. This separation is also why you cannot edit case data in Lightbox: the master record stays with your provider, who remains responsible for it, and you receive a faithful, read-only copy to consult and annotate.

In Lightbox, an entity is any person or organisation that plays a part in your cases. You can consult the entities linked to the cases synchronised to your account, which typically include the holders or applicants of your rights, such as your own company and other group companies, the representatives who act before the IP offices, the correspondents, that is, the agents who act for your provider in other jurisdictions, and other organisations involved, such as opposing parties in disputes, together with their contacts. Open the entities area from the side menu, search by name or other details, and open a record to see its information; the list can be shown in a grid or in Table View, and you can go back to the filters to refine the search. Entities are a read-only copy of what your provider's system holds, and you only see those related to your synchronised portfolio, never your provider's other clients. They help you understand who is who in your portfolio, check that the holder of a right is recorded correctly, and know whom to contact about a case. If an entity you expect is missing or its details are wrong, tell your provider, who keeps the record.

An entity record brings together what your provider's system holds about one person or organisation in your portfolio. Its general data identifies the entity: the name, type, address, country, identification numbers and other details used to recognise it in the cases and by the IP offices. Its contacts list the people you can reach at that entity, with their email address, phone and preferred language where recorded. It also shows how the entity relates to your portfolio, letting you see the cases in which it takes part and in which role, and any documents your provider has shared for it. Which parts appear, and how much detail each holds, depends on what your provider records and synchronises to your account; financial or internal information the provider keeps for its own management is not part of what you consult. As with cases, the record is a read-only copy, so you cannot edit, delete or save changes. Entity records are useful for checking that the holder of your rights is recorded with the correct name and address, which matters for the validity of your rights, and for finding the right contact. If anything is incorrect, ask your provider to correct it in their system.

Each case links to entities through roles, which say what part each person or organisation plays. The applicant or holder is the owner of the right, the entity in whose name it is filed or registered; it is usually your company or another company of your group, and it is also the role your provider typically uses to decide which cases are synchronised to your Lightbox account. The representative is the agent or firm that acts for the holder before the IP office. A correspondent is an agent who acts in another jurisdiction on behalf of your provider, as often happens when rights are extended abroad. The case responsible is the person answerable for the case on the provider's side. In disputes, other parties such as opponents appear too, and court cases list the parties and their representatives. Reading these roles helps you understand who acts in each case and why, for example whom the IP office will write to, or which local agent handles a right abroad. You see the roles on the General tab of each case, and from an entity record you can see the cases in which it takes part. Roles are recorded by your provider; if one seems wrong, let them know.

Entities and contacts in Lightbox are a read-only copy of your service provider's records, so the correction has to be made by your provider in their own system. Tell them what has changed: the simplest way is to add an annotation, if your role allows it, to a case where the entity or contact appears, stating clearly which details are wrong and what they should be, for example a new email address, phone number, postal address, or a person who has left and their successor. The annotation keeps your request with your name and the date, so it is documented and does not get lost in a mailbox. If the change is urgent, for instance because correspondence is going to someone who has left the company, also contact your provider directly. Once they have updated their record, the corrected details reach Lightbox at the next synchronisation. Keeping these details right matters more than it may seem: the contacts recorded by your provider are the ones they write to, and the holder's name and address can affect the validity of your rights at the IP offices, so changes of company name or address may also need to be recorded officially.

Open the case and look at the General tab, which shows the entities involved. Two of them answer this question. The representative is the agent or firm acting for you before the IP office in that case, which is usually your service provider, or a correspondent when the right is handled in another jurisdiction on your provider's behalf. The case responsible is the person at your provider who is answerable for the case, the one to talk to about its progress, deadlines and next steps. Open the representative's entity record to find contact details, such as an email address and phone number, where your provider has recorded them. If you want to raise something about a specific case, an annotation on that case, written by someone with a role that allows it, keeps the question attached to the right record with its author and date, where your provider can see it if annotations are shared with them in your configuration; mark it Private only if it is for your own colleagues. For urgent matters, contact the case responsible or the representative directly. If no responsible is shown, or the person has changed, ask your provider to update the case.

Lightbox lets you request reports on the portfolio synchronised to your account, so that you can take information away from the screen in a form you can file, print or circulate. The reports on offer depend on your account's configuration and plan, and typically include portfolio listings of your rights, reports related to the entities in your cases, and graphical views of the portfolio. Each report is produced either as a PDF, convenient for reading, printing and sending to management, or as an Excel file, convenient when you want to sort, filter or combine the data yourself. When you request one you give it a title and choose its language, so that a report for a colleague abroad can be produced in their language, and depending on the report you can narrow it by a date range and by Nice or Vienna classes. A report can be marked Private, and where your plan provides it a report can be Digitally Certified, which signs it to prove its content at a given date. Reports are prepared in the background and appear in your report list when ready. The reports contain only the information synchronised to your account, so they reflect your provider's records as at the last synchronisation.

Go to the report list, choose the report you want and fill in its options. You give the report a title, which is required and is how you will recognise it in the list; choose its language, also required; and choose the file type, PDF or Excel. Depending on the report, you may also set a Start Date and End Date, where the start must come before the end, and select at least one Nice or Vienna class. You can tick Private to keep the report to yourself, and, where your plan provides it, Digitally Certified to have it signed. Choose Submit to send the request, or Cancel to leave. The report is not produced while you wait: it is registered and prepared in the background, so you can carry on working, or sign out, and come back to it later. The report list shows each request with its name, requester, comment, processed date and status, which moves from Registered to Processing and then to Processed when the file is ready to open; once you have opened it, it shows as Read. If a report ends in Error, check its options and request it again, and if it fails a second time, contact support from the Help Centre with the report's title and the time you requested it.

Because reports are prepared in the background, each one in your report list carries a status that tells you where it stands. Registered means your request has been received and is waiting its turn; nothing is wrong, it simply has not started yet. Processing means the report is being produced now; large portfolios, long date ranges or many classes take longer than small ones. Processed means the file is ready and you can open or download it; the processed date column shows when it was finished. Read means the report has been opened, which helps you tell new results from those you have already looked at. Error means the report could not be produced. When that happens, look first at the options you chose, such as the date range or the classes, since a selection with nothing in it, or an unusual combination, can be the cause, and request the report again. If it fails again, open a support ticket or use Contact support in the Help Centre, giving the report's title, the options you chose and the time of the request, so that the team can trace it. A report that stays in Registered or Processing for an unusually long time is worth reporting in the same way.

Lightbox puts the information you need for a review in one place and lets you prepare it without asking your provider for a status report first. Start by filtering your portfolio to the rights on the agenda, for instance by jurisdiction, class, status or holder, and use Table View to scan them side by side. Open the key cases to check their status, next deadline, recent acts on the Evolution tab and the documents shared, and read the annotations already written on them, so that past decisions and open questions are fresh in your mind. The Performance Dashboard gives you the broader picture to open the meeting with: Coverage, Vitality and Conflictuality over the period you choose, the Portfolio Stratification chart and the World Coverage map, which help you spot jurisdictions where you are thin or areas with more disputes. Request a report in PDF for the participants, or in Excel if you want to work on the list, in the language each needs. During or after the meeting, record the action points as annotations on the cases concerned, dated and signed, marking internal ones as Private, so that the decisions stay attached to the rights they concern and can be followed up at the next review.

The simplest and safest way is to give your colleagues their own access rather than sending them files. An Admin of your Lightbox account can invite colleagues from Profile > Team, choosing a role for each: Reader for those who only need to consult, such as marketing, product or management teams, and Contributor for those who should also add annotations, such as the in-house legal team. Each person then signs in with their own Darwin Suite email and password, chooses their own interface language and sees the same portfolio, so everybody works from one information base that is updated by synchronisation instead of from spreadsheets that go out of date the day they are sent. That also reduces the number of status requests to your provider, since colleagues can find the answer themselves, and keeps a record of who did what, as annotations carry their author. When someone needs something to take away, such as a board member or an external adviser, request a report in PDF or Excel. Remember that access follows the account: anyone you invite sees the whole portfolio synchronised to it, so choose roles with care, and remove people promptly from Profile > Team when they leave or no longer need it.

Lightbox uses the same three roles as the rest of Darwin Suite, and each member of an account has one of them in that account. Admin can do everything a Contributor can, and also manages the account: inviting colleagues, approving or declining requests to join, changing roles and removing users in Profile > Team, editing the Company Account details, and handling Subscriptions and Billing where these apply. Contributor can consult everything in the account and add, edit and delete their own annotations, which makes it the role for the people who work with your provider on the portfolio. Reader can consult cases, entities, court cases, annotations, the Performance Dashboard and reports, but cannot write annotations; it suits colleagues who only need to look things up. Whatever the role, case, entity and court-case data is always read-only in Lightbox, because it belongs to your provider's records. A role applies to one account only: if you belong to several accounts, you may be an Admin in one and a Reader in another. Someone who joins Lightbox through an account without a subscription is enrolled as a Reader, and the account's Admins are informed so that they can decide whether to give more.

If you are an Admin of the account, open Profile from the user menu and go to Team, where you see everybody who belongs to the account with their role. Use the invitation option to enter your colleague's email address and choose the role they should have: Reader if they only need to consult, Contributor if they should also write annotations, or Admin if they will help to manage the account. Your colleague receives an invitation email with a link. If they already use any Darwin Suite system, they simply sign in with their existing email and password and the account is added to their Accounts menu; if not, they create their password first. They can accept or decline the invitation, and if they do not respond the link eventually expires, in which case you can send a new one. Choose the role carefully, because everyone in the account sees the whole portfolio synchronised to it, and you can change the role at any time from the same panel. The number of users an account can have may depend on your plan; if you reach a limit, see Subscriptions or contact the sales team. If you are not an Admin, ask one of your account's Admins, or your provider if they manage the account for you, to send the invitation.

All three are done by an Admin in Profile > Team. Requests to join appear there when someone asks to be part of your account, for instance by registering with your account's name, and you can approve them, giving the person access, or decline them, in which case they do not see your portfolio; people who join through an account without a subscription arrive as Readers and the Admins are informed. To change a role, find the person in the list and choose the new one: Reader for consultation only, Contributor to allow annotations as well, or Admin to let them manage the account; the change applies to this account only. To remove a user, use the removal option beside their name. Removing someone ends their access to this account and its portfolio, annotations and reports, but it does not delete their Darwin Suite sign-in or their membership of any other account they belong to. Keep at least one other Admin in the account, so that the team can still be managed when you are away. If you are not an Admin and need one of these changes, ask an Admin of your account; if nobody in your organisation is an Admin, your provider or Techframe support can help you find out who is.

Open Profile from the user menu. The Personal Account panel holds your own details: your first and last name, photograph, telephone, country and interface language. The language you choose changes the whole Lightbox interface for you, without affecting your colleagues, who each choose their own; the six available languages are English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian. Case data is still shown as your provider recorded it. Your profile is shared across Darwin Suite, so the changes you make here also appear in any other suite system you use with the same sign-in. If you are an Admin, you will also see the Company Account panel, which holds the identity of the account itself: its name, type, dimension, activity, country, tax number and the company logo shown in the interface. Other panels in Profile include Security, where you change your password or turn on two-step sign-in, and Team, where Admins manage the members of the account; depending on your role and plan you may also see Subscriptions and Billing. Remember that the account you are working in is the one selected in the Accounts menu, so if you belong to several accounts, make sure you have chosen the right one before changing Company Account details.

Protection starts with the way Lightbox is built: you consult a copy of your synchronised cases held in your own account, never your provider's database, so the only information reachable from Lightbox is what was deliberately shared with you. All traffic travels over encrypted HTTPS connections; plain HTTP is redirected and browsers are told to refuse it in future, and only approved application addresses may call the services behind Lightbox. Your account is always taken from your signed-in session, never from the address bar, so nobody can reach another account's data by editing a link. Inside the account, roles decide who can do what: Readers consult, Contributors also annotate, and Admins manage the team. You can protect your own sign-in further with two-step sign-in, using an authenticator app, in Profile > Security, which is worth doing given the commercial value of portfolio information. Stored credentials, such as mailbox passwords and AI keys, are encrypted and never shown again after saving. Private annotations stay within your account. Techframe also keeps backups, audit trails and an incident response procedure, and its staff are bound by confidentiality agreements, as set out in its published security statement, in line with the GDPR.

No. Each Lightbox account receives only the cases synchronised to it. Your provider sets up the synchronisation on your company's own entity record, naming the role your company has on the cases and the Lightbox account that should receive them, so the cases sent to your account are those in which your company holds that role, and nobody else's. Another client of the same provider has its own Lightbox account, fed by its own synchronisation, and cannot see your cases, your annotations or your reports, just as you cannot see theirs. Within Lightbox, the account you are working in is always taken from your signed-in session rather than from the browser's address, so changing a link does not lead to another account's data, and only the people invited to your account, or whose requests to join were approved by your Admins, can open it. The one thing to keep under your own control is who belongs to your account: review the list in Profile > Team regularly and remove anyone who should no longer have access. If you ever see a case that you believe is not yours, tell your provider at once so that they can check the role recorded on it and the synchronisation, and let Darwin Suite support know as well.

Review access regularly, and at once whenever something changes. A sensible habit is for an Admin to go through the list in Profile > Team at fixed intervals, for instance every quarter or at each portfolio review, checking that everyone listed still works with the portfolio and that their role still matches what they do: Reader for consultation, Contributor for those who write annotations, Admin only for the few who manage the account. Beyond that routine, act straight away when someone joins or leaves your organisation, when a person moves to a role that no longer needs the portfolio, when an external adviser's engagement ends, and when your relationship with a service provider changes, for example if you appoint a new provider or stop working with one. Remove people promptly: removing a user ends their access to the account at once, without affecting their sign-in for other accounts or systems. Look also at pending join requests and decline those you do not recognise. Encourage everyone, and Admins in particular, to turn on two-step sign-in in Profile > Security. These reviews are your responsibility as the account owner, because your provider controls what is synchronised to the account but not who you let into it.

Most people reach Lightbox through an invitation. If your service provider shares your portfolio with you, they set up a Lightbox account for you, synchronise your cases to it and invite your contacts; an Admin of your own Lightbox account can also invite colleagues from Profile > Team. Either way you receive an invitation email with a link: if you are new to Darwin Suite you choose a password, and if you already use another Darwin Suite system you simply sign in with your existing email and password, because a single sign-on serves every system. You can also start on your own: create an account, then subscribe to the plan that suits you, either Brand Owner if you are a portfolio owner working with providers or Law Firm if you are a service provider serving clients. A new Lightbox account can be created from the New account option in the user menu. What you see once inside depends on the cases synchronised to the account you select and on the role you have been given, which may be Admin, Contributor or Reader. If you expect access and have not received an invitation, check your spam folder and then ask your provider or your account's Admin.

Open the invitation email and follow its link. If you do not yet have a Darwin Suite sign-in, you are asked to create your password, which must have at least 8 characters including a letter, a number and a special character, and to complete a few personal details such as your name, language and country. If you already use Darwin Ignite or another Darwin Suite system with the same email address, you do not need a new password: sign in with your existing credentials and the invited account is added to the accounts you can reach. You can accept or decline the invitation, and a page confirms which one you chose; once accepted, you join the account with the role the person who invited you selected. If the link has passed its validity, you see a page saying the invitation has expired, and you need a new one. After accepting, you land in Lightbox with the invited account selected; if you belong to several accounts, you can change between them at any time from the Accounts menu. Make sure you open the link with the same email address it was sent to, because the invitation belongs to that address.

Ask the person who invited you, whether at your service provider or an Admin of your own Lightbox account, to send you a new invitation. They can do this from Profile > Team in a few moments, and the new email replaces the old link; there is nothing you need to do with the expired one, and no account is created or changed by it. Invitation links expire on purpose. An invitation is an open door to an account that holds portfolio information, and an email can be forwarded, left in a shared mailbox or found long after it was sent; limiting how long the link works reduces the chance of it being used by someone other than the intended person, or long after the circumstances that justified it have changed. When the new invitation arrives, open it promptly and with the same email address it was sent to. If you already have a Darwin Suite sign-in, you can sign in with it as usual. If a fresh link also reports that it has expired, or you keep receiving no email, check your spam folder and then contact support from the Help Centre, mentioning the address that should have received it.

After signing in you arrive at the Performance Dashboard, which monitors the activity and performance of your portfolio with the Coverage, Vitality and Conflictuality cards, the Portfolio Stratification chart and the World Coverage map. On a new account the dashboard may still be empty, because its figures are prepared in advance and the initial load of your cases depends on the size of the portfolio. On the side you find the menu, which leads to your cases, entities and the other areas available to you; what appears there depends on your account's configuration and your permissions. At the top is the header, and on the right the user menu, with your profile, the Accounts and Systems switchers, New account, the Help Centre and sign out. Good first steps are to open Profile > Personal Account and check your name, photo, phone, country and language, which sets the language of the interface; to consider turning on two-step sign-in in Profile > Security; and then to search your portfolio to confirm that the cases you expect are there. If something seems missing, check that the right account is selected and ask your provider whether the synchronisation has finished.

On the sign-in page, choose Forgot password and enter the email address you use for Darwin Suite. You receive an email with a link to reset your password; follow it and choose a new one with at least 8 characters, including at least one letter, one number and one special character. Remember that Darwin Suite uses a single sign-on, so the same email and password serve Lightbox, Darwin Ignite and every other system of the suite you use: resetting the password in Lightbox changes it everywhere, and your old password stops working in all of them. If you have turned on two-step sign-in, you still need the code from your authenticator app after entering the new password. If the reset email does not arrive within a few minutes, check your spam or junk folder and make sure you typed the address with which you were invited. When you know your current password and simply want to change it, do it from Profile > Security instead; for security, a password can be changed at most twice in 24 hours. If you still cannot get in, contact support from the Help Centre.

Yes, and it is recommended, because a Lightbox account gives access to information about your portfolio, your parties and your documents. Open Profile > Security and turn on Two-step sign in. You are guided to link an authenticator app on your phone, usually by scanning a code shown on the screen, and to confirm with a code generated by the app. From then on, after entering your email and password you are also asked for the current code from the app, so someone who learns your password cannot sign in without your phone. Because Darwin Suite uses a single sign-on, the setting protects your sign-in to every system of the suite, not only Lightbox. Keep your authenticator app available when you change phones; if you lose access to it, contact support from the Help Centre. Two-step sign-in is one of several protections: all traffic is encrypted over HTTPS, access within an account depends on the role each user has, and the account whose data you see is always taken from your authenticated session. Account Admins may want to encourage every member of the team to turn it on.

Yes. One Darwin Suite user can belong to several accounts, and you move between them from the Accounts option in the user menu without signing in again. The account you select scopes everything you see: the cases, entities, dashboard figures, reports, annotations and team all belong to that account, and nothing from one account appears in another. This is useful in several common situations. A portfolio owner who works with more than one service provider may have a separate Lightbox account fed by each of them, or several accounts for different companies of a group. A person at a service provider may belong to the Lightbox accounts of several clients in order to see exactly what each client sees. A consultant may be invited to the accounts of different organisations. Your role can be different in each account, so you may be an Admin in one and a Reader in another. If you expect to see an account in the list and it is not there, check that you accepted the invitation with the same email address you sign in with, or ask that account's Admin to invite you again.

Open the user menu and choose New account. Give the account a name, ideally the name of the company or portfolio it represents, and decide whether to tick Import current account configurations, which starts the new account from the configuration of the account you are in instead of from scratch. When you confirm, the account is created and you become its Admin; select it from the Accounts menu to start working in it. A new account is empty until cases are synchronised to it. For that, your service provider, in their Darwin Ignite, opens the entity that represents you in Entity Management and, on its Lightbox tab, adds a Lightbox sync with Active ticked, the Role the entity has on the cases (for example applicant), your account as Lightbox Account and any Comments; the cases in which the entity has that role are then synchronised to your account. Apart from the initial load, whose duration depends on the size of the portfolio, setting this up takes only a few minutes. Darwin 5.1 users can be served through the same model, depending on their provider's configuration. Remember that the number of accounts included depends on your plan.

Lightbox follows the same layout as the other Darwin Suite systems, so if you know one of them you will feel at home. On the left is the side menu, which takes you to the main areas: the Dashboard, the search of your portfolio, entities, court cases where your provider shares them, reports and the Help Centre. The entries you see depend on your account's configuration and on your permissions, so two users may not have exactly the same menu. Along the top is the header, with tools available on every screen, and on the right the user menu, from which you reach your profile, switch between accounts and systems, create a new account, open the Help Centre and sign out. The large area in the centre is the content area, where the screen you have chosen appears: the Performance Dashboard, a search with its filters and results, or the detail of a case with its tabs. Lists can usually be shown as a results grid or in Table View, and detail pages let you move to the previous or next record of your results. The layout adapts to the width of your screen, so on smaller devices the side menu folds away and opens from a menu button.

Open the portfolio search from the side menu. You are shown a set of filters that you can combine to narrow the cases synchronised to your account: for example the owner or applicant, the jurisdiction, the Nice, Vienna or Locarno class, the status, your reference or the provider's, the application or registration number, and the title or wording of the right. Fill in only the filters you need; leaving them empty widens the search. When you run it, the matching cases are listed in a results grid, and you can switch to Table View to see more cases at once in columns, which is handy for comparing dates and statuses. To refine the search, use Back to Filters, change or clear the values and search again. Open any result to see its detail page, and use Previous and Next there to move through the results without going back to the list. The search only covers the account you have selected, so if you work with several providers or companies, change account from the Accounts menu to search another portfolio. If a case you expect does not appear, clear all filters first and then check that it has been synchronised to this account.

The user menu, opened from your name or photo at the top right of the screen, gathers everything about you and the accounts you work in. Profile opens your settings: Personal Account for your name, photo, phone, language and country, Security for your password and two-step sign-in, and, depending on your role, panels such as Company Account, Team and Subscriptions. Accounts lists the accounts you belong to and lets you switch between them; the account selected scopes all the data you see. Systems lets you move to other Darwin Suite systems, such as Darwin Ignite, with the same sign-in; joining a system your account does not subscribe to enrols you as a Reader and informs that account's administrators. New account creates a new account, optionally importing the configuration of the current one. The Help Centre gives you the FAQs, the tutorial videos, the Contact support form and your support tickets. Finally, Sign out ends your session, which is worth doing on shared or public computers. Some options appear only when they apply to you, for example the switchers only matter when you belong to more than one account or system.

Open the user menu, choose Profile and, in Personal Account, select your language. The interface is available in six languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German and Italian. The choice is personal, so each member of your team can work in their own language within the same account, and because Darwin Suite uses a single sign-on the same preference applies to the other systems of the suite you use. Changing the language translates the menus, buttons, field names, messages, dashboard headings and Help Centre content. It does not translate the data itself: case titles, descriptions, goods and services, annotations and documents stay as they were recorded by your provider or by the person who wrote them, which is usually what you want for legal information. The language you choose also helps the platform present information in a way that suits you, for example the format of dates. If a few texts still appear in another language after the change, refresh the page; if they persist, let support know through the Help Centre so that the translation can be corrected.

Yes. Lightbox is a web application, so there is nothing to install: you open its address in a browser and sign in, on a computer, a tablet or a phone. The layout is responsive, which means it adapts to the width of the screen. On a smaller device the side menu folds away behind a menu button, cards and panels stack one above the other, and wide lists can be scrolled sideways. Consulting a case, checking a deadline, reading an annotation or adding a short note works well on a phone or tablet, for example before a meeting or while travelling. For tasks that involve comparing many cases at once, such as working through search results in Table View, studying the dashboard charts or preparing a review, a larger screen is more comfortable. Use an up-to-date version of a modern browser, such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, and keep it updated. Your sign-in, profile and preferences are the same on every device, and the same security applies: all traffic is encrypted, and if you use two-step sign-in you need your authenticator app. Remember to sign out when you use a shared device.

Open the Help Centre from the side menu or the user menu. It has four parts. FAQs gathers the questions and answers, like this one, which you can search by word; the Most frequently asked list reflects how often each answer is opened. Tutorials offers short videos, usually between one and a half and three minutes, organised by category. For Lightbox they cover the introduction, access and first sign-in, navigating, consulting your portfolio, entities and contacts, synchronisation, annotations, list views and layouts, reports and insights and troubleshooting, as well as business topics such as visibility, using Lightbox as a companion to existing systems, sharing across teams, client and internal reviews, and access and security. Contact support lets you write to Techframe's support team with a subject, a message and an attachment of up to 20 MB, such as a screenshot; the team aims to get back to you within 24 hours. Support Tickets lists the requests you have opened and lets you follow their status. Remember that questions about the content of your cases, such as a status or a deadline, are best addressed to your service provider, who manages the record.

Darwin Ignite is the web-based IP management system of Darwin Suite for service providers: IP agents, attorneys and law firms. It is where your provider may keep and work on your portfolio, and therefore, for many Lightbox users, the source of the information they consult. In Ignite a provider records and edits trade marks, patents, designs and other rights, with their dates, parties, classes, history and documents; manages clients, applicants, agents and contacts in Entity Management; follows litigation in Court Case; watches official bulletins for marks that may conflict with your portfolio in the Watch Section; tracks publications that affect your cases in the Publication List; runs viability (registrability) searches; registers incoming letters and emails with the help of AI; generates letters and documents from a case with OIL, its Office Integration Layer; follows deadlines; produces reports; and measures the practice's performance on its own dashboard. It runs on the same platform as Lightbox, by Techframe, with the same sign-on, profile, roles and security. From the entity record it keeps for your company, your provider can synchronise your cases to your Lightbox account, which is how a portfolio managed in Ignite becomes visible to you.

The two systems play complementary parts in the same relationship. Darwin Ignite is the operational system in which your provider keeps the official record of your cases and does the work: entering events, receiving and filing correspondence, following deadlines, monitoring bulletins and producing letters. Darwin Lightbox is the shared window through which you consult that record and comment on it: it receives a copy of the cases synchronised to your account, shows them read-only, and lets you add annotations, request reports and follow the Performance Dashboard. The link between them is the synchronisation your provider sets up on your company's entity record in Ignite, which sends the cases where your company has a chosen role to your Lightbox account and keeps them updated as your provider works. Annotations are the bridge in the other direction, carrying your instructions and questions where the configuration allows, while private annotations stay with whoever wrote them. Because both systems run on the same Darwin Suite platform, they share the single sign-on, the profile, the roles, the security and the Help Centre; someone who uses both moves between them with the Systems switcher in the user menu, without signing in again.

Your provider needs three things: a Lightbox account for you, a synchronisation and invitations. The Lightbox account is created from the user menu with New account, giving it a name and, optionally, importing the current account's configurations; it can be created by your company or by your provider on your behalf. In Ignite, your provider then opens your company's record in Entity Management and, on its Lightbox tab, adds a synchronisation row: Active to switch it on, Role for the role your company has on the cases to be shared, such as applicant, Lightbox Account to name your account, and Comments for their notes. Every case in which your company has that role is then copied to your account and kept up to date; several rows can be added for different roles or accounts. Finally your provider, or an Admin of your account, invites your colleagues, who receive an email and sign in with their Darwin Suite email and password. Apart from the initial load, which depends on the size of your portfolio, the set-up takes a few minutes. If your provider works in Darwin 5.1 rather than Ignite, a similar arrangement can be made, depending on their configuration.

Ignite is built for doing the work on a portfolio, Lightbox for following it. In Ignite, users with the right role can edit cases and open new ones, change dates, parties, classes and life cycles, and record acts and invoices on the Evolution tab, all of which Lightbox only shows. Ignite also includes tools Lightbox does not have: the Watch Section, which monitors official bulletins for marks that might conflict with the portfolio and supports oppositions; the Publication List of incidences published about the cases; viability searches, powered by Darwin GSE; the document workflow drawer, where incoming emails, PDFs and scanned letters are read with the help of AI, matched to cases and filed; OIL, which generates letters and documents from a case, in the recipient's language, and can send them by email; Upload portfolio, to load a portfolio from public registers or a spreadsheet; Scrum Boards for team tasks; the ARIA assistant; and a dashboard that measures the practice itself, with Efficiency, Vitality and Rentability compared with peers, operations, AI spending and team. Reports exist in both. What Lightbox offers instead is a lighter, read-only view with annotations, designed for portfolio owners and colleagues who consult rather than operate.

Ignite gives your provider one place to run every stage of your rights, and much of that work shows up in Lightbox as updates to your cases. Deadlines are calculated from each case's next valid date together with the acts still pending in its history, and are coloured as they approach, so that renewals and responses are not missed. The Watch Section monitors official bulletins for new marks similar to yours, so that your provider can propose oppositions in time, and the Publication List gathers incidences published about your cases, such as requests, grants or refusals. Incoming correspondence is registered through the document workflow drawer, where AI reads each document and proposes its type, a summary, the deadlines it mentions and the cases it concerns, all confirmed by a person before filing. Letters and reports to you are produced with OIL from the case data, in your language, and filed against the case and against your company. As your provider records these events, the case's status, history, deadlines and shared documents change in Ignite, and the synchronisation brings those changes to your Lightbox account, which is why you can follow the progress of your portfolio without asking for a status report.

Yes. Darwin Suite uses one federated single sign-on for all its systems, so the email and password you use for Lightbox are also your sign-in for Darwin Ignite and the other suite systems; there is no separate account to create or password to remember. Once you have access to Ignite, you move between the two from the Systems switcher in the user menu, without signing in again, and your profile, language and two-step sign-in apply to both. What you see in Ignite, however, depends on the account you work in and on its subscription: having a sign-in is not the same as having an Ignite account with a portfolio in it. You can be invited into an Ignite account by its Admin, for instance by your company's own IP team, or create an Ignite account of your own, starting with the Free plan. If you join Ignite through an account that has no subscription for it, you are enrolled as a Reader and the account's Admins are informed, so that they can decide what access to give you. Note that using Ignite does not give you access to your provider's Ignite account: their system and their data remain theirs, and you continue to see your cases through Lightbox.

Yes. Although Ignite is designed mainly for service providers, nothing prevents a company or an in-house IP team from creating its own Ignite account and managing its rights there. You start from Create your free account with your email and password, or, if you already use Lightbox, with your existing Darwin Suite sign-in, and set up the account, beginning with the Free plan, which allows one user and up to 1,000 processes, and moving to Core, Prime or Corporate as your needs grow. To load your portfolio, Upload portfolio offers the Portfolio Applicants wizard, which starts from your company as applicant, identifies the jurisdictions and processes found in public registers, asks you to validate them and to give GDPR approval, and then loads them in the background, as well as the option of loading a spreadsheet. Keep in mind that this is a separate portfolio, managed by you: it does not replace or edit your provider's records, and cases your provider manages continue to reach you through Lightbox. The sales team can tell you more about which option suits your company.

It is a copy of the same information for the cases that are synchronised to you, but not a complete mirror of your provider's system. Lightbox receives the cases in which your company holds the role your provider chose, with their details, parties, classes, history and the documents shared, and it is refreshed as your provider works, so at any moment it may lag slightly behind the Ignite record until the next update arrives. It also contains less than Ignite: your provider's other clients, their internal work such as watch analysis, document workflow, scrum boards and the practice dashboard, and anything not shared with you never reach your account. Annotations follow their own rules: private annotations written in Ignite stay with your provider, private annotations you write in Lightbox stay with you, and non-private ones can be shared according to how the synchronisation is configured. The figures differ as well, because each system has its own dashboard: Lightbox measures your portfolio, Ignite measures the practice. When Lightbox and what you were told by your provider disagree, the Ignite record is the reference; ask your provider to check it, and the correction will reach you at the next synchronisation.

They answer different questions for different readers. The Lightbox Performance Dashboard looks at your portfolio: its Coverage, Vitality and Conflictuality cards describe how far your rights are protected, how active the portfolio has been and how much of it is drawing oppositions or disputes, over 30 days or 3, 6 or 12 months; the Portfolio Stratification radar compares this year with last year in new and completed tasks; and the World Coverage map shows where your portfolio has rights. The Ignite dashboard looks at the service provider's practice and has four tabs: Overview, with Efficiency (the share of its clients' filings found in public registers that the practice actually handles), Vitality and Rentability, compared with practices of similar size in the same home jurisdiction, plus portfolio radars and a map of where it files; Operations, with watches, publications, deadlines, documents and what falls due, and a Personal switch for each person's own work; Artificial intelligence, with the spending of the account's AI; and Team. Vitality appears on both but measures each from its own side. Both are prepared in advance rather than calculated on opening, and neither uses AI to produce its figures. Your provider's dashboard is not visible from Lightbox.

Darwin Ignite has four plans, chosen in Subscriptions. Free is for getting started: one user, up to 1,000 processes, 10,000 documents or 1 GB, one jurisdiction with simple alerts, 5 email templates, 100 free uploads from official institutes and a simple AI dashboard. Core allows 5 users, 5,000 processes, 250,000 documents or 500 GB, three jurisdictions with detailed alerts, domain watch, 200 signatures a month, 250 uploads and the advanced dashboard. Prime allows 20 users, unlimited processes, 50 million documents or 10 TB, five jurisdictions, auto-updating files, 2,000 signatures, 1,000 uploads and a private language model for email classification. Corporate offers unlimited users and processes, a dedicated server, 20 TB, ten jurisdictions, 5,000 signatures and 5,000 uploads. Plans can be paid monthly or yearly, the yearly option saving two months; changes take effect at the next sign-in and increases are charged pro rata. Silver credits come with the plan, while Gold credits and Digital Signatures can be bought and never expire. These are Ignite subscriptions, separate from Lightbox's Law Firm and Brand Owner plans; for prices, see Subscriptions in Ignite or ask the Techframe sales team.

Work through a few checks in order, starting with those you can do yourself. First, clear the filters in your portfolio search: a jurisdiction, status or class left over from an earlier search easily hides a case, and try searching by its number or reference rather than by title, since titles may be recorded differently. Second, check the account selected in the user menu under Accounts: if you belong to several Lightbox accounts, for instance one per provider or per group company, the case may be in another one. Third, if the synchronisation was set up recently, the initial load may not have finished yet; large portfolios take longer, and cases appear progressively. If none of these explains it, the likely cause is on your provider's side: cases reach Lightbox because your company holds a particular role on them, such as applicant, so a case where your company is recorded under a different role or name, or not at all, is not synchronised. It is also possible that the case is managed by a different provider, or not yet opened in your provider's system. Ask your provider to check the role recorded on the case and the synchronisation for your account, giving them the case's number, jurisdiction and title.

Lightbox shows a copy of your provider's record, refreshed by synchronisation, so it can only be as current as that record and the last update. There are three common reasons for a case to look out of date. The change may simply not have reached you yet: there is an interval between your provider recording something and the copy being refreshed. Your provider may not have recorded the event yet: a grant, a publication or a renewal only appears once the office has acted and your provider has entered it in their system, and offices publish on their own timetable. Or the synchronisation may have been stopped or changed, in which case no further updates arrive. To see what was last recorded, look at the Evolution tab, where the acts are listed in date order, and at the case's dates on the General tab; you can also follow the link to the office's official register to compare with what the office shows. If the difference persists, ask your provider to check their record and the synchronisation. An annotation on the case, describing what you think is missing and why, is a convenient way of doing so, as it stays attached to the right; if the matter concerns a deadline, contact your provider directly as well.

The Performance Dashboard is prepared in advance from the cases synchronised to your account, rather than calculated the moment you open it, so that it loads at once; the price of that speed is that it reflects your portfolio as it was when the figures were last prepared. If your account is new, or its synchronisation was set up recently, there may be nothing to show yet: the initial load has to finish and the figures then have to be prepared before the cards, the Portfolio Stratification chart and the World Coverage map fill in. Check the period you have chosen as well: with 30 days selected, a quiet portfolio may genuinely show little activity, while 12 months gives a broader view. Small portfolios naturally produce small or uneven figures, because a single filing or opposition moves the indicators noticeably. Make sure, too, that you are in the right account in the Accounts menu, since each account has its own dashboard. If figures are still missing after the portfolio has been in place for a while, or they do not match what you see in the cases, open a ticket or use Contact support in the Help Centre, saying which account, card and period you were looking at, ideally with a screenshot.

Start by finding out whether the problem is signing in or seeing the portfolio once signed in. If your colleague cannot sign in, check that they use the email address the invitation was sent to and the password of their Darwin Suite sign-in, which is the same for every suite system; they can use Forgot password on the sign-in page if needed. If they turned on two-step sign-in, they also need the code from their authenticator app. If they never completed registration, the invitation link may have expired: an Admin can send a new one from Profile > Team. If they can sign in but see nothing, check in Profile > Team that they are actually a member of the account, and that the invitation was accepted rather than declined or left pending; if they asked to join, an Admin must approve the request. Then ask them to open the Accounts menu and select the right account, since someone who belongs to several accounts may be looking at another. Check their role too: Readers can consult but cannot write annotations. If all of that is correct and the account shows no cases for anyone, the issue is the synchronisation, which your provider should check. For anything else, open a ticket in the Help Centre.

Most display problems are solved by a few simple steps, tried in order. Refresh the page first, since a momentary connection problem is the most common cause. If that does not help, sign out from the user menu and sign in again, which renews your session; this is also the step that makes a recent change of plan or role take effect. Next, clear your browser's cache, or open Lightbox in a private window, to rule out an older copy of the application stored by the browser. Make sure you are using an up-to-date version of a modern browser, and try another browser to see whether the problem follows you. Check your internet connection, and, if you are on a company network, whether a firewall, proxy or browser extension might be blocking part of the page; an ad blocker is a frequent culprit. If a page opens but looks empty, try enlarging the window, since a very small window can hide content. If the problem persists, open a support ticket or use Contact support in the Help Centre, describing what you were doing, the page, the time and your browser, and attach a screenshot, which you can include as an attachment of up to 20 MB.

It depends on whether the question is about your cases or about the platform. Contact your service provider for anything concerning the content of your portfolio: a case that is missing, a date, status or party that looks wrong, a document you expected to see, an outdated contact, a deadline and what to do about it, or which cases are shared with your account. Your provider keeps the master record and configures the synchronisation, so only they can change what you receive; an annotation on the case is a good way of pointing them to the exact detail. Contact Darwin Suite support for anything concerning access and the platform itself: you or a colleague cannot sign in, a page does not load or shows an error, a report ends in Error, the dashboard does not fill in after a reasonable time, or something in the interface behaves unexpectedly. Use the Help Centre, where you can search the FAQs, watch the Tutorials, send a message with Contact support, or open and follow a ticket in Support Tickets; the team replies within 24 hours. If you are not sure which one applies, start with support, giving the account and case concerned, and they will tell you if it is a matter for your provider.