BlackBoiler Announces Two New Patents for Automated Contract Markup Technology

Woman using BlackBoiler

Patents cover method of creating seed data through suggested edits and automatically managing standard negotiation clauses by contract domain

Arlington, VA, Dec. 07, 2020 – BlackBoiler, the leader in automated contract markup, today announced it has been issued two additional patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its AI-assisted contract review software. BlackBoiler’s patented technology is the only software in the market that fully automates the contract review and markup process. To date, BlackBoiler has been granted seven USPTO allowances and has additional patent applications pending in Canada and Europe.

The two additional patents build upon the core components of BlackBoiler’s pre-execution technology. One of the new patents covers BlackBoiler’s capabilities to automate the building of playbooks for automated contract markup, allowing users to develop the standards for their contracting terms. In fact, less than 25% of legal departments have a playbook.

The other patent allows users to automatically manage standard negotiation clauses by contract domain, enabling BlackBoiler to automatically revise clauses inserted into contracts with the correct slot value (e.g. party name, contract subject, contract name, etc.) to match the language used in the contract.

“These two new patents underscore the specific value proposition that BlackBoiler’s propriety technology brings to the contract lifecycle management process to help law firms standardize their contract review. All of these capabilities ensure a higher level of accuracy in the contract review, while also helping lower risk and accelerate revenue capture,” said Dan Broderick, co-founder and CEO of BlackBoiler. “I’m proud of our team for their dedication to ongoing innovation and expanding the scope of our intellectual property.”

One of the recently approved patents, Method and System for Suggesting Revisions to an Electronic Document, is a core component of BlackBoiler’s pre-execution technology for contract review and markup. BlackBoiler creates client-specific editing models and provisions according to a company’s playbook to make instantaneous company-specific revisions in track changes to previously unseen documents. The newly patented innovation is part of a family of three patents as well as additional patent applications claiming this method.

The other patent recently issued by the USPTO, Systems, Methods, and Computer Program Products for a Clause Library, refers to BlackBoiler’s proprietary technology for a smart clause library, which houses and manages an organization’s standard negotiation clauses and organizes them by contract domain. BlackBoiler automatically adjusts the language in the standard clauses to match language in a document under review, saving attorneys time spent on manually updating variable elements in standard clauses.

BlackBoiler’s patented technology addresses a global, $35 billion market in which companies spend $26 billion reviewing and negotiating semantically similar contracts, $7 billion of which is verbatim work. BlackBoiler delivers up to a 70% reduction in review time compared to in-person review. The company’s automated editing technology suggests company-specific revisions to corporate documents to automate the process of contract negotiation—right in Track Changes, like an attorney would.

“Our team is dedicated to helping clients do their best work, and that means finding ways to improve and add additional options to our technology,” said Daniel Simonson, senior computational linguist, and NLP research lead at BlackBoiler. “These patents confirm our leadership in the industry as we push the boundaries of natural language processing to meet the needs and challenges of contract negotiation.”

For more information, go to blackboiler.com.

About BlackBoiler
Based in Arlington, Virginia, BlackBoiler is a National Science Foundation-backed software company focused on the automation of contract review. The company’s patented automated contract markup tool is designed to work seamlessly with programs users already know how to use: Word and email. Through proprietary techniques, BlackBoiler creates client-specific editing models and leverages these models to markup inbound contracts instantaneously in the Track Changes feature of Microsoft Word. BlackBoiler grows smarter and increases efficiency of contract review with each additional use. For more information, go to blackboiler.com.

Media Contact
Erin Harrison
Plat4orm
erin@plat4orm.com

BLACKBOILER CONTRACT REVIEW SOFTWARE