CPi runs your docket and renewals. PracticeLink adds the operations layer on top: dashboards, US filings, client portals. No migration required.
Your CPi system has been doing its job for years, and doing it well.
The dates are tracked. The annuities and renewals get paid on time. The docket holds the prosecution history, the party data, the deadlines that can't slip. CPi is one of the most established names in IP management for a reason. Firms that run it tend to trust it.
The question was never whether CPi holds the data. It's who can see it, when, and in what form.
A partner asks where a client's portfolio stands before a call. The ops director wants to know which matters are running hot this week. A client wants to log in and see current status without emailing anyone. Each of those questions sends someone into CPi, then into a report, then into Excel, then into a Word doc. By the time the answer lands, the call's over.
CPi was built to run the docket and the renewals. PracticeLink was built to make the practice move. They're designed to work together, and they connect through CPi's own API.
What Is CPi?
CPi is the IP management system from Computer Packages Inc., a privately held company that's been building patent and trademark software since 1968. They develop it in-house and have refined it across more than fifty years of real prosecution and renewal work. Alongside the docketing system, CPi is widely known for annuity and renewal payment services, with validated global data behind the deadlines it tracks.
If your firm runs CPi, you know what makes it dependable. The dates are right. The renewals get paid. The docket reflects how your firm actually files, tuned over years. That reliability is the asset.
It's also where the friction starts. The more your firm has built around CPi, the more the data it holds depends on someone who knows how to get it out. Saved searches. Custom reports. The export, the cleanup, the reconcile. The data is solid. The path from data to a decision the rest of the firm can act on is long.
For a broader look at what "IP operations" covers beyond docketing, see What Is IP Operations?
What Stays in CPi When You Add PracticeLink?
Adding PracticeLink doesn't ask you to migrate, reconfigure, or unwind anything you've built in CPi. The point of an operations layer is to leave the system of record alone.
Prosecution deadlines and statutory dates. CPi remains the docket. PracticeLink reads from it and never writes back to the date fields.
Annuities and renewals. CPi keeps managing renewal deadlines and payments the way it does today. PracticeLink doesn't touch that. Renewals stay where they already run well.
Custom fields and configurations. Years of tuning don't get thrown away. PracticeLink reads custom fields directly and surfaces them in views your team can actually use.
Party, agent, and entity data. CPi holds the master records. PracticeLink references them, doesn't replace them.
Historical data. Every matter, every event, every history line stays where it is. PracticeLink works against the live data, not a one-time export.
Your CPi administrator does not have a migration project. Your docketing team does not learn a new system. That part is the whole point.
What Does PracticeLink Add to CPi?
PracticeLink connects to CPi through its API and uses the data as the foundation for an operations layer. Most of what it adds shows up as one thing: views of your practice, and movement of your work, that didn't exist before.
Dashboards that don't require IT. Firm-wide views of matter status, workload, deadline density, response cycles, and bottlenecks. The data is coming from CPi. The configuration is happening in PracticeLink. Ops directors stop filing report requests and start seeing the practice for themselves.
Cross-matter and cross-client visibility. Roll up by client, by attorney, by technology, by jurisdiction, by anything in your CPi data model. Custom fields you've maintained for years finally show up in views the rest of the firm can read.
Office action workflow. This is the one people ask about most. PracticeLink syncs with CPi docketing to manage the full office action response cycle. The office action comes in, gets classified against the right CPi matter, gets routed to the right attorney. The response workflow kicks off with built-in checkpoints, task assignments, and deadline tracking tied to the docket dates already in CPi. The attorney works the substance. PracticeLink handles the logistics.
One source for the whole firm. Instead of each team keeping its own export or spreadsheet pulled from CPi, everyone works from one connected set of your CPi data inside PracticeLink.
Client portals fed by your CPi data. Branded client portals and electronic tri-folds pull from your CPi data. One configuration per client. After that, the portal updates without anyone rebuilding it by hand. Client reporting runs 30% faster across firms using PracticeLink for this, and reporting satisfaction sits at 98%.
Practice data, surfaced for partners. A partner asks where a portfolio stands before a panel review. A lateral candidate asks what the firm runs and whether they can see their book on day one. A client asks for write-off and realization context on flat-fee matters. Each of those questions used to require a project. Now it requires a link.
Document intake feeding the matters in CPi. Incoming mail captured from the shared inbox, classified, linked to the right CPi matter, routed to the right person, and profiled to your DMS. Automatic. Firms running this see mail processing speed improve by 50%.
Forms and citations using CPi data. USPTO filing packages, IDS citations with cross-family references, forms with smart prefill from CPi party and matter data. Forms preparation runs 45% faster.
Soft-docket alongside the statutory docket. Attorneys set their own preparation dates and reminders in PracticeLink without touching the official CPi docket. Personal task layer, not date-field changes.
What a Typical Day Looks Like
A docketing specialist at a firm running both systems might start their morning like this:
8:30 AM. Overnight mail has already been processed. PracticeLink captured 47 incoming documents from the shared mailbox, classified each one, linked them to the right matters in CPi, and routed them to the attorneys and paralegals who need to act on them. Three office actions, two notices of allowance, a restriction requirement, and a stack of foreign correspondence. All sorted before anyone opened their laptop. The ops director opens a single dashboard and sees the day shape up before standup.
10:00 AM. A senior paralegal pulls up live matters for one of the firm's anchor clients. She needs to confirm IDS status across a patent family before the team reviews a new prior-art search. In the old workflow she'd open CPi, run a saved search, export to Excel, cross-check against the citation tracker she maintains, and reconcile. Now the view is already there. Family members, references already cited, references pending, attorney of record. She adds two new references from yesterday's search, previews the package, and sends it through the review workflow. The attorney approves it by 11. Twenty minutes total. Last year, this was a two-hour job.
11:30 AM. A partner emails the client team. He needs a snapshot of a client's active prosecution work before a 2 PM call. The client team sends a portal link. The portal is already current, pulled from CPi, formatted to the client's preferences. He reads it on the elevator.
3:00 PM. A senior associate asks how many continuations the firm has filed for a specific client in the last twelve months. In the old workflow that's a custom report request to IT, scheduled for next Tuesday. In the new workflow it's a view that already exists. He has it before his next call.
None of this required a change to CPi. The dates are where they've always been. The renewals are still CPi's job. The configurations are intact. CPi still runs the docket. PracticeLink runs the operations around it.
How Does PracticeLink Connect to CPi?
For teams evaluating how the systems connect:
Connection method. PracticeLink connects to CPi through the API CPi provides.
Hosting and security. PracticeLink is cloud-native and hosted on Microsoft Azure. SSO, role-based access controls, encryption in transit and at rest, and audit trails are built in. Our written security best-practices documentation and recent penetration testing reports are available on request before any pilot conversation.
Data flow. PracticeLink reads from CPi: matter data, dates, party information, custom fields, history. The flow runs one direction. PracticeLink does not write back to CPi date fields. Your system of record stays the system of record.
What PracticeLink adds on top. Dashboards and operational reporting, client portals and branded reports, document intake and classification, forms and citations (IDS, USPTO filing packages), soft-docket management, workflow automation, and the Planner for color-coded date visibility.
DMS integration. PracticeLink also connects to netDocuments and iManage. Documents profiled to the right matter with metadata derived from CPi.
Setup and IT lift. The CPi connection is part of the standard PracticeLink implementation. Your CPi administrator is consulted, not displaced. No changes to your existing CPi configuration are required, no new on-prem infrastructure, no firewall changes beyond standard SaaS allowlisting. IT lift is minimal by design, and we can put you in touch with IT leaders at peer firms who ran the same integration so you can hear what it actually took.
What If You're Already Running CPi?
You have the hard part done. The data is captured, the dates are tracked, the renewals are paid, the configurations reflect years of decisions about how your firm files. The remaining question is whether anyone outside the docketing team can actually see what's in there, and whether the work around the docket moves as well as the docket itself.
If partners file report requests and wait days, that's not a CPi problem. If ops directors can't watch the practice in real time, that's not a CPi problem either. CPi was built to run the docket and the renewals, not to be the dashboard, the workflow engine, or the integration hub. Those are different jobs. And the gap between them is what PracticeLink fills.
Five of the top 10 US patent filing firms run PracticeLink alongside their docketing systems. Our longest-tenured clients have been with us through multiple platform generations and several of their own leadership changes. The pattern repeats: keep the system of record you've spent years tuning, add the layer that makes its data usable across the firm.
A few things worth saying clearly. PracticeLink was built by people who ran IP operations before they built software. Our team carries more than 150 combined years inside IP practices. We don't touch your statutory dates, and we don't take ownership of work that has to live inside your firm. Your audit trail is your audit trail. Your liability model doesn't change because there's an operations layer on top of your docket.
Common Questions
Does PracticeLink replace CPi?
No. PracticeLink is an operations layer that sits on top of CPi. Your docketing team keeps working in CPi exactly as they do today, and CPi keeps managing your annuities and renewals. PracticeLink reads from CPi and surfaces the data through dashboards, client portals, and operational reporting that the docketing system was never designed to deliver.
How does PracticeLink connect to CPi?
Through the API CPi provides. PracticeLink reads matter data, dates, party information, custom fields, and history. It does not write back to CPi date fields, so CPi stays your system of record.
Does PracticeLink change anything in our CPi configuration?
No. PracticeLink reads from CPi and doesn't write back to date fields or configurations. Your CPi administrator is involved in the connection setup but doesn't need to reconfigure anything to support PracticeLink.
What about our annuities and renewals?
Those stay in CPi. PracticeLink doesn't manage renewal payments and doesn't try to. That work stays where it already runs well.
Are there office action tools that sync with CPi docketing?
Yes. PracticeLink manages the full office action response workflow tied to docket dates in CPi. When an office action arrives, PracticeLink classifies it, routes it to the right attorney, and kicks off the response workflow with task assignments and deadline tracking. The statutory dates stay in CPi. PracticeLink handles the work between receiving the action and filing the response.
Do partners and clients need CPi logins to see anything?
No. That's the point. Partners see firm-level views through PracticeLink dashboards. Clients see their own portfolio through a branded client portal. Neither needs a CPi seat or training.
What does the integration cost?
The CPi integration is included with PracticeLink. There's no separate licensing fee for the connection. Pricing depends on your firm's size and configuration. Talk to our team for specifics.
Can PracticeLink work with other docketing systems too?
Yes. PracticeLink integrates with CPi, FoundationIP, Inprotech, Patricia, and others. The pattern is the same regardless of the underlying system. The docketing system holds the data. PracticeLink makes it visible and operational.
Ready to See It?
The first conversation isn't a pitch deck. It's a working session with an IP operations advisor from our team. We walk through your CPi data model, look at the custom fields you've built, and show you what the integration looks like against your actual matters. By the end you'll know what would be visible, what would be automated, and what the pilot would scope to. Schedule a conversation with our team.