Vendor shall provide docketing, tracking, payment and reporting services for non domestic (foreign) applications/patents.  Vendor shall maintain a current case docket to ensure the at fees for annuities and taxes are paid on a timely basis.  Vendor shall enter information in its docketing system from Government-furnished and publically available records to effect the payment of annuities, taxes, and maintenance fees.  Vendor shall have a computerized docketing, tracking, and payment database system with the capabilities to calculate and administer different country by country patent regulations in regard to payment of annuities, taxes and maintenance fees.  Safeguards are in place to reduce or eliminate errors are a requirement, without the need of restorations.  Vendor shall provide use of patent office electronic data to verify data.  Vendor shall provide paperless (online) annuity management.  Patent annuity services shall include electronic due diligence audit of patents and due diligence audits.  Vendor shall provide online electronic management which allows the Government to monitor costs, and vendor shall guarantee the exchange rate. 

 CPI is the only vendor that has the required level of safeguards and security necessary to protect intellectual property rights.  CPI is the only vendor that can pay annuities and also offer data verification, online management system, electronic cleansing of data, update of missing data in client's records with patent office data, and data audits.  Additionally, CPI has current possession of the data pertaining to foreign filing applications in USDA's docket, and would not be possible for another vendor to accomplish these deadlines without possession of the data.  It would take several months to facilitate a data transfer of the 100+ active files in USDA's foreign filing docket in order to be successful.  As we have many cases, a data transfer must be done in an orderly fashion and can take several months for docketing and payment of fees, and if it is not done this way payments can be overlooked, foreign patent rights can be lost and the Government could be liable to licensees and/or co-owners for lost rights.

 Anticipated date of award:  December 15, 2011.