IPRally Drafting helps you write a patent application from your invention materials. The AI does the routine work, and you stay in control of every change. This manual covers the main features.
For a quick answer inside the app, open an interactive Drafting guide from the "…" menu of a draft.
Contents
1. Overview
Drafting works in two modes:
Plan mode walks you through the application one section at a time. The AI proposes a plan for each section, you refine and accept it, and the AI then writes the section.
Edit mode is a full document editor. You edit by hand, or ask the AI to change a selection, a paragraph, a section or the whole draft.
Three principles apply everywhere:
Transparent. The reasoning of the AI is visible and for you to check before it is applied.
You decide. No AI change goes into the draft until you accept it.
Source-grounded. The AI works from your invention materials, seed documents and known prior art, and shows which source it used.
Your drafts are saved on the server automatically a few seconds after you stop typing. The top bar shows the save status.
A draft in Edit mode showing the three columns: the Draft navigator on the left, the document in the centre, and the Status, Claim scope optimizer and Quality review boxes on the right, with the prompt at the bottom.
2. Getting access
Drafting is part of your company's IPRally subscription. To use it:
Your company's subscription must include the Drafting module.
You need a Professional or Collaborator license, with the Drafting permission. A Collaborator license holds Drafting only.
Company admins assign Drafting to users in the user management settings. If you can't start a draft, ask your company admin to check your license and permission.
3. Starting a new draft
Go to Protection and click Create new Draft (the plus next to Drafts in the left sidebar).
On the Invention materials tab, describe your invention, or click Attach to add files. The Info button next to Attach lists the file types you can use.
Optional: add seed documents and known prior art on their tabs, by publication number or as files.
Optional: select or create a Matter to keep related drafts together.
Optional: click Settings to choose the drafting style, language, AI assistance level, AI models and custom instructions. Planning mode is on by default; turn it off to get a full first draft in one step.
Click Start.
You can also start from an existing Word draft: add it with Start from Word in the starting materials.
The Protection home page with the new-draft form: the invention description field, the Attach and Info buttons, the Seed documents and Known prior art tabs, the Matter button, Settings and Start.
4. Starting materials
The Starting materials box in the left column holds three kinds of source. Each document gets a label that you can use in your prompts.
Invention materials (INV1, INV2…): your invention description and files. The AI always uses them, as the ground truth.
Seed documents (SEED1…): reference material, for example earlier applications for terminology, style or text. Tell the AI how to use each one, for example "Copy style and terminology".
Known prior art (KPA1…): documents the claims must be new over.
Add patents by publication number, or attach files such as PDF, Word, text, spreadsheets, presentations and images. Each document card shows whether the AI could read it, and Open shows the original and the text the AI extracted. You can correct the extracted text. Materials belong to the draft; changing them affects later AI steps only, not text that is already written.
The Starting materials dialog with an INV file, a SEED document with its "How should the AI use it?" note, and a KPA patent, each showing its read status.
5. Draft settings and presets
Open the settings with the gear icon in the top bar. They apply to the current draft, from the next AI step on.
Draft style: Global (one text meant to work at multiple offices with minimal amendments), EPO or USPTO. The style controls claim form, terminology and the number of independent claims.
Language: the language the AI writes in, for example English (UK or US), French, German, Finnish, Swedish, Italian or Spanish.
AI assistance: High adds context, examples and advantages; Medium stays close to your materials with related variations; Low stays strictly on your materials.
AI models: Smarter (the default) for the best quality, or Faster for quicker edits and answers.
Custom instructions: free-text instructions that go into every AI step for this draft, for example house style.
Presets save custom instructions for reuse. Create and manage them in your account settings under Drafting, or from Manage presets in the draft settings. Mark one as the default for new drafts. Presets are personal to your account, and each draft keeps its own copy of the text.
The Draft settings dialog with its four areas: style and language, AI assistance, AI models, and custom instructions with a preset selected.
Custom instructions management in Settings
6. Plan mode
Plan mode builds the application phase by phase. Completed phases fold away and the active phase stays open.
Invention materials, then Seed documents and Known prior art (when you have them): confirm what the AI should use.
Independent Claims, Dependent Claims, Field of the Invention, Background, Summary of the Invention and Detailed Description. Each has two steps: Plan, where the AI writes an outline with its reasoning, and Draft, where it writes the text from the accepted plan.
In Independent Claims the AI picks the claim categories that protect the invention best, such as an apparatus, a method, a use or a computer program, within the limits of your draft style.
Refine or ask. Type into the prompt at the bottom. An instruction, such as "Make claim 1 broader", refines the current plan or text. A question, such as "Why is feature X in claim 1?", gets an answer without changing anything. Revert to previous undoes the last refinement. Click Accept to move on, or Edit to change the text by hand.
Source chips. Labels such as INV1, SEED2 and KPA3 show as coloured chips, so you can see where each statement comes from.
Autopilot. Auto-Complete Planning in the Plan contents box lets the planner accept each step for you; Stop autopilot hands control back.
When all phases are done, click Start editing to open the full draft in Edit mode. The Planning | Editing switch takes you back to the plan.
Plan mode with the Independent Claims phase open: the AI ANALYSIS, the claim outline with source chips, and the Accept, Edit and Check prior art buttons, with the Plan contents box on the left.
7. Edit mode
The draft shows as a document in the centre. The Draft navigator on the left lists the sections and figures.
Editing by hand
Click into the text to type. Select text for the formatting toolbar.
Type / in an empty line to insert a heading, table, image, figure reference, chemical formula or equation.
Editing with AI
Use the prompt at the bottom of the page for all AI work. The AI decides whether your text is an edit instruction, a question, or both. An edit can cover:
the whole draft (the default);
a selection: select text and click AI edit;
a paragraph or a section: use the sparkle buttons in the left margin.
Name a source to give it to the AI, for example "Adapt the terminology to SEED2" or "Distinguish claim 1 from KPAs".
An AI edit under review: changed paragraphs highlighted in the document, the Pending changes bar with Implement all and Discard all, and the prompt at the bottom.
Reviewing AI changes
An AI edit arrives as pending changes in the document. Accept or reject each change, or use Implement all or Discard all.
Q&A
Questions about the draft get answers in the Q&A panel at the prompt, with chips that link to the paragraphs they refer to. Q&A never changes the draft.
Question "How does claim 1 differ from KPAs?" asked in the master prompt.
8. Prior art: Check prior art and the Claim scope optimizer
Drafting can compare your claims with prior art and suggest amendments.
In Plan mode, click Check prior art in the Independent Claims phase. It runs an IPRally search with your claims.
In Edit mode, use the Claim scope optimizer box: compare your claims with your known prior art, or run a new prior art search.
The analysis covers every independent claim. The results open in a drawer, one card per document. Each card shows which claim features the document discloses and a match label:
CLOSE MATCH: the document discloses all, or nearly all, features of the claim.
PARTIAL MATCH: the document discloses part of the claim.
DISTANT: most claim features are not found in the document.
For each document you can Implement a suggested amendment as an AI edit, or choose Implement with edits to adjust it first. The Bookmark adds a found document to your known prior art.
The analysis is AI-assisted support for your own review, not a legal opinion. Always check the cited passages yourself.
Prior art search and following suggested amendments in the Planning mode.
Checking claim scope against the Known Prior Art in the Edit mode.
Prior art search in the Edit mode.
The prior art drawer with three result cards showing CLOSE MATCH, PARTIAL MATCH and DISTANT labels, the claim features per independent claim, and the Implement and Bookmark actions.
9. Quality review
The Quality review box runs four checks on the draft:
Clarity: unclear or inconsistent wording.
Claim support: claim features without support in the description.
Disclosure: gaps in what the application discloses.
Reference numbers: reference numbers that don't match between the text and the drawings.
Each finding stays in the list until you Implement its suggestion (as an AI edit) or Reject it. Implement all applies every pending suggestion at once. A finding is marked Potentially outdated when later edits changed the text it points to; run the review again to refresh it.
The Quality review drawer with Clarity findings: one pending finding opened to show its suggestion and Implement and Reject buttons, and resolved findings folded below.
10. Figures and drawings
Figures are the drawings of the application. They appear in the drawings area below the text, or side by side with it, and the Draft navigator lists them as Fig. 1, Fig. 2 and so on.
Generating drawings from the specification
Generate Drawings proposes figures from your draft text. Review the proposals, then let the AI draw them. Sync Specification and Drawings brings the text and the drawings back in line after changes, for example by updating reference numbers.
Adding a single figure
Click Add Figure and choose how to create it:
From a file: add your own image as is, or let the AI convert it into a patent line drawing.
By prompting: describe the figure and let the AI draw it.
From a template: start a flow chart, vector drawing (SVG), chemical formula (SMILES) or equation (LaTeX) and edit its source, by hand or with AI.
The Add Figure choices: From a file, By prompting and From a template.
Working with figures
Each figure has a caption and a list of reference numbers with their part names. Edit them on the figure card.
Use the arrows to reorder figures; the numbers follow
Ask the AI to change a figure from its editor, for example "Add a valve to the diagram".
The drawings area with two figure cards (a line drawing with reference numbers and a flow chart), their captions and reference number lists, and the Generate Drawings and Add Figure buttons.
11. Version history, undo and redo
Every manual edit, accepted AI edit, planner step and restore creates a version. Open Version history with the clock icon in the top bar to:
browse versions grouped by day, each with a short summary;
compare any two versions and step through the changes;
see the AI instruction behind an AI edit;
Restore an earlier version. The restore is itself a version, and Undo in its message brings back what it replaced.
In Edit mode, Undo and Redo are in the top bar, and the usual keyboard shortcuts work.
The Version history drawer. Each version can be compared with any other version and old versions restored.
12. Matters and organising drafts
A matter groups the drafts of one invention, for example an EPO and a USPTO version. Matters appear in the left sidebar and on the Protection home page. From a draft's or matter's menu you can rename, duplicate or delete it, or start a new draft in a matter. Pin drafts you use often; they appear under Pinned in the sidebar.
Each draft has a status, such as In progress or Exported, shown on the home page and in the draft.
13. Export and import
Export: click Export in the Status box in the right column and choose Word (.docx) or PDF (.pdf). The export is formatted for filing, with the claims, the abstract and each figure on their own pages.
Import: Import DOCX in the … menu replaces the draft with a Word file. It asks you to confirm and saves a version first, so you can restore the previous text.
14. Keyboard shortcuts
w: open the prompt
e: AI edit the paragraph under the pointer
Shift + E: AI edit the whole section under the pointer
/: insert a heading, table, image, figure reference or formula
↑ in the prompt: recall an earlier prompt
Esc: leave the text or the prompt
Ctrl/⌘ + Z: undo; Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + Z: redo
The letter shortcuts don't fire while you type in the text or the prompt. A hint under the prompt shows the shortcuts you can use at any moment.
15. Good to know
Planning mode is chosen when you start a draft and can't be switched later.
Sharing drafts or matters with colleagues is not available yet.
Tracked changes and comments in Word files are not imported yet.
Custom instruction presets are personal; there are no company-wide presets yet.
The app's buttons and menus are in English; the AI writes in the draft's language.
Questions or feedback? Contact us through the chat in the app.