CPi and FoundationIP both keep the dates well. So why are you shopping? Compare both docketing systems honestly, plus the third option neither demo shows.
Picture a docketing manager with two browser tabs open. CPi in one, FoundationIP in the other. She's scored both demos on a legal pad, and here's the awkward part. The scores are basically tied. Both systems catch the deadlines. Both pull data from the offices. Both hold portfolios, generate forms, and haven't once let a date slip in the demos she watched. So she stares at two near-identical columns and asks the question the vendors talked around for an hour: if they're both this good at holding dates, what am I actually buying, and why am I shopping in the first place?
That last part is the one worth sitting with. When two competent date-keepers score dead even, the reason you're shopping is almost never a date-keeping failure. Something else drove you here. This page is about naming that something before you sign a migration contract to fix it with the wrong tool.
We'll give you a fair read on CPi and FoundationIP, because the honest split between them is smaller than either demo suggests. Then a third column neither tab shows you. Straight disclosure: we build PracticeLink, and it sits in that third column. That's precisely why we'll be honest about the first two. Spin the incumbents and you'd have no reason to trust anything we claim about our own tool.
What actually separates CPi and FoundationIP?
Not deadline-tracking. Both do that. The real difference is the vendor behind each tool, and what it means to run your docket inside an independent shop versus inside a global data company.
CPi is Computer Packages Inc. It's been writing IP docketing software in-house since 1968, and it's stayed independent and privately held that entire time. Its patent and trademark systems hold your dates, portfolios, and forms, and the docketing pulls records straight from the offices to keep them current. CPi describes its approach as automated checks paired with in-country analyst review across 100-plus jurisdictions. It also runs a separate patent-annuity service that pays renewal fees in more than 100 jurisdictions, which we'll come back to. Firms that have run CPi for a decade trust it the way you trust something that hasn't let them down.
FoundationIP comes from Clarivate. It's cloud IP practice management aimed at firms of every size, and Clarivate bills it as the first cloud-based IP management solution. It offers one-click docketing from the USPTO and from email, task dashboards, forms generation, and firm KPI reporting, with law updates pushed a few times a year across a broad jurisdiction set. It traces back to the old CPA Global docketing line and now lives inside a very large data company. Docketers know it. It does what it's built to do.
So what's the honest read? If you want an independent shop with long roots, one that writes its own software and answers only to its customers, CPi is the more self-contained pick. If you want cloud-first docketing backed by a big data company with a wide jurisdiction reach, FoundationIP fits. Both are legitimate. Both are also, notice, arguments about the docket. And you already told us the docket keeps catching your dates.
What about annuities and renewals?
Short answer: less than it first looks, because both vendors offer them.
CPi runs a separate patent-annuity service that pays maintenance and renewal fees across more than 100 jurisdictions. So does Clarivate. Its CPA Global operation is one of the largest renewals businesses in the world, and it's the same company that makes FoundationIP. So "keep docketing and renewals under one vendor" is something both of these can do. It isn't a reason to pick CPi over FoundationIP. In both cases renewals is a separate service sitting alongside the docketing product, not a feature inside it.
Worth knowing too: plenty of firms deliberately keep annuity payments with a specialist provider, separate from whoever holds the docket, so they aren't tied to one vendor for two very different jobs. Either way, renewals is a narrow, specific question, and it doesn't break the tie between these two systems. If renewals is really what's driving your search, price both vendors' renewal services directly. If it isn't, you're back to two tied columns and the question of why you're shopping.
If both systems catch the deadlines, why does the work still pile up?
Here's where the shopping trip usually started, even if nobody wrote it down.
The mail sat over a long weekend and nobody sorted it. Two office actions landed in an inbox no one was watching. A client called to ask where their matters stood, and it took three people and half a day to build the answer. IDS prep lives across four spreadsheets that don't agree with each other. Every one of those hurts, and every one of them is why a manager starts pricing new docketing systems.
Now line them up against what a docketing system actually does. It catches dates. It stores portfolios. It flags deadlines. Not one of those complaints is a deadline that went uncaught. The mail piling up isn't a docketing failure. A status report eating an afternoon isn't a docketing failure. The forms scattered across spreadsheets aren't a docketing failure. They're all the work that happens between the deadlines the system already caught. That's the gap CPi and FoundationIP both leave, because it was never their job to fill.
Which means swapping one date-keeper for the other date-keeper moves nothing. You'd spend a year and serious money relocating your dates from a system that catches them to a different system that catches them, and the mail would still pile up on the other side. Buying a faster stopwatch does nothing for a runner who keeps tripping between the markers.
The option that wasn't on either demo
Neither tab showed you this one, so here it is plainly.
Keep the date-keeper you already trust. CPi or FoundationIP, whichever your docketers are fluent in. Then add PracticeLink on top to run the operations the docket was never built to run.
PracticeLink is an IP operations platform. It reads from your docketing system, your document management, your billing, and your forms, and it connects the tools you already use so a paralegal isn't keying the same matter into five different screens. The incoming mail gets sorted and routed to the right matter. The IDS and forms get built. When a client asks where things stand, the answer is already assembled instead of "let me chase that down." And your dates never move. PracticeLink reads from the docket. It does not write your date fields, and it is not itself a docketing system.
That's the shape of it. CPi and FoundationIP both answer "where do the dates live?" PracticeLink answers a different question: "how does the work travel from the mail to the docket to the forms to the client without a human ferrying it by hand?" You were never going to solve that second question by changing the answer to the first. Which is exactly why those two tied columns felt like they were missing something. They were.
It plugs into CPi, FoundationIP, and others. Nothing to migrate. Nothing to rip out. The longer argument for running your operations this way is here.
When CPi or FoundationIP is genuinely the right buy
We'd rather lose your business honestly than win it on a bad fit. So here's when you should absolutely buy one of these two.
Buy a new docketing system when the docketing system is what's broken. If your current tool runs on hardware nobody supports anymore, or the vendor is quietly sunsetting it, or it genuinely can't hold the jurisdictions your practice has grown into, that's a real trigger. Move. And when you move, compare CPi and FoundationIP on their merits: pick CPi if you want an independent, in-house vendor with long roots, and pick FoundationIP if you want cloud-first docketing with a big data company standing behind it.
But if your dates are landing fine and the pain is the mail, the visibility, the forms, and the client updates, a migration is an expensive answer to a question you never asked. Before you sign, it's worth reading what switching a docketing system actually costs, because the bill runs well past the license: every deadline that moves between systems is a deadline that can go missing in the move, and here a missing deadline isn't a ticket to reopen. It's a client's patent right.
CPi, FoundationIP, and a third column
Two of these columns are docketing systems doing nearly the same core job. The third answers a different question altogether. Read the table with that in mind.
| CPi (Computer Packages) | FoundationIP (Clarivate) | Keep your docket + add PracticeLink |
| What it is | Independent, in-house IP docketing, plus a separate renewals service | Cloud docketing and IP practice management | Operations platform running on top of your docketing |
| Core job | Catch and hold the dates | Catch and hold the dates | Move the work between the mail, docket, forms, and client |
| Best fit | Firms wanting an independent vendor with annuities under one roof | Firms wanting cloud-first docketing behind a large data company | Firms whose pain sits around the docket, not in it |
| Your current docketing system | Becomes this | Becomes this | Stays put. PracticeLink connects to it. |
| Migration required | Yes, if you switch to it | Yes, if you switch to it | No |
| Handles well | Dates, portfolios, forms, office-fed docketing, patent annuities | Dates, portfolios, one-click USPTO docketing, forms, KPI dashboards | Mail intake, IDS and forms prep, cross-tool workflow, client reporting |
| Renewals / annuities | A separate CPi service, 100-plus jurisdictions | Not inside FoundationIP; Clarivate offers renewals separately via CPA Global | Not our category. Keep whoever pays your annuities. |
| The vendor | Privately held, independent, coding since 1968 | One product line inside a global data company | IP operations only, worked with operations advisors |
| Writes your date fields | Yes, it owns them | Yes, it owns them | Never. It reads, it doesn't write. |
Every cell in the two incumbent columns is drawn from each vendor's own materials and kept general on purpose. If you're mid-deal with either, confirm the current specifics on their site, because products move.
Where PracticeLink stops
PracticeLink is not a docketing system, and we won't dress it up as one. If your docket is genuinely dying and you need a real replacement, PracticeLink doesn't make that decision go away. You'll still choose CPi or FoundationIP or something else to hold your dates, and then PracticeLink runs the operations on top of whichever one you land on.
And renewals aren't ours either. Quartz IP doesn't pay annuities, we won't pretend otherwise, and whoever handles your maintenance fees today keeps handling them. PracticeLink runs the operational work around the docket no matter who pays the renewals, so it doesn't touch that part of your decision at all.
This isn't a fringe route. Mintz, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, and Lathrop GPM all kept the docketing system they already ran and put PracticeLink on top rather than switch. Five of the top ten US patent filing firms run it that way, and it processes more than 700,000 documents a year.
Where it pays for itself is the daily grind that neither swapping date-keepers nor a full rip-and-replace ever touches. Firms on PracticeLink move their mail 50% faster, build forms 45% faster, and turn client reporting around 30% faster, at a 98% client-reporting satisfaction rate. Call it about five billable hours a week handed back per attorney. Not from anyone hustling harder, from killing the retyping and the tab-switching and the where-does-this-even-go. Those are hours the firm was already paying salaries for and writing off. They come back without one new hire.
There's a people side to it, too, and it matters more than any feature. Quartz IP brings more than 150 combined years in IP operations, and firms work with operations advisors instead of filing tickets in a queue. Ask for something the roadmap didn't anticipate and you start a conversation, not a support case. We publish a support and product-lifecycle policy so firms know what year-over-year actually looks like.
What changes for each seat at the firm
Go back to the docketing manager and her two tied tabs. A migration hands everyone at the firm a fresh worry. Keeping the docket and adding operations on top removes the worry instead.
- The docketing manager stays in the system her team already knows cold. No relearning a screen mid-deadline-season, no reset of a decade of muscle memory. The dates stay exactly where she trusts them. - The operations director stops bracing for the deadline that vanishes in transit, because nothing is in transit. He fixes the real bottleneck, the work around the docket, instead of funding a migration that never reaches it. - The managing partner skips the money and the months a switch burns. The thing partners actually gripe about, slow client updates and long turnarounds, gets solved without a firm-wide project on the docket. - IT has nothing to tear out. The date data sits still, the docketing system stays right where it is, and PracticeLink reads from it. That's a far lighter security review than hoisting years of matters onto a brand-new platform.
Frequently asked questions
CPi vs FoundationIP: which is better for a law firm?
On the core job, they're close to even. Both catch deadlines, pull records from the offices, hold portfolios, and generate forms. The honest difference is the vendor behind each one. CPi (Computer Packages Inc) is independent, privately held, and has coded its docketing in-house since 1968. FoundationIP is Clarivate's cloud docketing and IP practice management product, backed by a large data company. Both also offer renewals as a separate service (CPi's own, Clarivate's through CPA Global), so that's not the tiebreaker. Prefer CPi for an independent vendor with long roots, FoundationIP for cloud-first docketing inside a bigger portfolio. Either way, first ask whether a date-keeper is even what you're missing.
Do CPi and FoundationIP handle patent annuities and renewals?
Both vendors offer renewals, just not inside the docketing product. CPi runs a separate patent-annuity service across more than 100 jurisdictions. Clarivate, which makes FoundationIP, runs one of the world's largest renewals operations through CPA Global. So consolidating docketing and renewals under one vendor is possible with either, and it isn't a reason to prefer one over the other. Some firms keep renewals with a specialist provider on purpose, separate from the docket.
Should I switch from CPi to FoundationIP, or the other way around?
Only if the docketing system itself is broken, like dead-end hardware, a vendor winding it down, or jurisdictions it can't hold. If your deadlines are landing and the real pain is mail, forms, visibility, and client reporting, swapping one competent date-keeper for another competent date-keeper won't touch any of it. Those are operations problems that live outside the docket, and a migration is a costly way to not fix them.
Is switching between two docketing systems worth the risk?
Rarely, unless the system you're leaving is genuinely failing. A move means remapping years of tangled IP data onto a new schema, confirming every deadline survived the trip, retraining docketers while they still work their day jobs, and running both systems in parallel while the team is temporarily slower. The scary cost is risk: any deadline that moves between systems can go missing, and a lost deadline can be a lost patent right. When both systems keep the dates well, that risk buys you almost nothing.
What's the alternative to switching docketing systems?
Keep the one you trust and add PracticeLink on top of it. PracticeLink reads from your docketing system and connects your document management, billing, forms, and client reporting, so the mail gets sorted, the forms get built, and the client gets an answer without a paralegal keying the same matter into five screens. No migration, no rip-and-replace. It works with CPi, FoundationIP, and others, and it never writes your date fields.
Is PracticeLink itself a docketing system?
It isn't. PracticeLink is an IP operations platform that sits on top of whatever docketing system you already run. Your docket holds and catches the dates. PracticeLink handles everything around them: sorting the mail, prepping IDS and forms, moving work across tools, and building client reports. It reads from your docket and never writes back to your date fields. If the day comes that you need to replace a dying docketing system, you'd still pick a docketing tool for that, then run PracticeLink over the top of it.