Product and intended use
Define the configuration, people, information and tasks being assessed.
Product and plan covered
Public claim only
Ambercite Ai and AmberScope are sold as one commercial unit: the same free trial and the same annual subscription cover both, and the Terms and Conditions apply to all Ambercite products and services. Clause 1.9 states subscriptions are for the use of the named subscribers only and cannot be shared outside the named subscriber's working group, with corporate subscriptions offered for wider access. The trial is served from amberscope.com.
Ask: Which named users will our subscription cover, what does a corporate subscription include, and is the API a separate agreement?
Deployment and hosting
Not confirmed
The product is delivered as a web application, with the trial and the application served from amberscope.com and a client portal on the vendor's own site; no on-premises or private-cloud option is published. No hosting provider, data centre, region or country is named on any of the four pages read, and no security or infrastructure page exists in the site map, which returned blog posts only.
Ask: Where are the application, the search index and any stored search history hosted, and is an Australian region available for our account?
What the product does
Public claim only
The product page states that 'Ambercite Ai uses deep-learning and network algorithms which find the most similar patents to one or more starting patents' and that results are ranked by similarity, with a review pane, abstracts and representative images for triage. Four application areas are published: prior-art and invalidity searching, licensing (with a 'Licensing Potential' metric), instant landscaping from a small seed list, and portfolio benchmarking. The About us page states the approach uses a network graph of patents and their citations rather than keywords or classification codes.
Ask: Demonstrate a prior-art search on one of our own patent families, including what the similarity score means and how the ranking would change if a citation were missing.
Jurisdiction and coverage
Public claim only
Coverage is defined by data availability rather than by jurisdiction: clause 3.3 requires users to recognise that coverage is limited to jurisdictions and patents where Ambercite can obtain patent citation data in a form suitable for analysis, and clause 3.4 lists sources of imperfection, including citation data supplied by applicants, discovered by examiners, published by offices, compiled by the vendor's data supplier, and processed by the vendor. The contract is governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia (clause 1.10).
Ask: Which patent offices' citation data is in the database today, how current is each, and is Australian (IP Australia) citation data included?
Vendor content directing how AI describes the product
Not confirmed
A deliberate check for vendor content directing how AI models, assistants or crawlers should describe the product found none, checked 2026-09-27. The site map returned 40 blog URLs and no /llms.txt, /ai-info or equivalent page, and no such block appears on the product, pricing, terms or About us pages read.
Ask: Does Ambercite publish any page or embedded instruction addressed to AI models or crawlers about how to describe its products?
Data, controls and requirements
Compare the actual configuration with firm, client and jurisdiction requirements, supported by evidence.
Client authority and professional use
Public claim only
Clause 3.1 states outputs must not be relied on without professional advice and must not by themselves prove value, patentability, validity, freedom to operate or infringement, and clause 3.5 excludes reliance for freedom-to-operate searching. The inputs are patent numbers and portfolio lists rather than client documents, and the terms contain no clause about client confidentiality, privilege or the confidentiality of a user's search queries.
Ask: Are our search queries and seed patent lists treated as confidential, and is that recorded anywhere in the agreement?
Model and model providers
Public claim only
The vendor states the ranking is produced by its own deep-learning and network algorithms over examiner and applicant patent citations, describing the technique as citation-network similarity rather than keyword, semantic or classification-code matching. No foundation model, no third-party model provider and no model version is named on any page read, and the About us page describes the underlying method as network analytics developed in-house since 2010. Nothing read indicates a generative language model.
Ask: Confirm that no third-party model or hosted AI service processes our search inputs, and if one does, name the provider, model and country.
Subprocessors
Not confirmed
No subprocessor list, hosting provider or data-centre operator is published. The only third party named anywhere on the pages read is in the cookies policy: 'The only third party to which we currently link to is Google Analytics in order to gather some anonymised usage statistics.' Clause 3.4 refers to 'our patent data supplier' without naming it.
Ask: Name your patent data supplier, hosting provider and any analytics or support processors, with the country each operates in.
Training and product improvement on customer content
Not confirmed
The terms contain no clause dealing with the vendor's use of user inputs, search queries, seed patent lists or saved searches, and no statement about training, fine-tuning or improving the algorithms with them. The privacy policy in section 4 addresses personal information only, stating it is used for the primary purpose of collection and related purposes such as providing services, billing and marketing. Nothing was found either permitting or prohibiting use of search inputs for model improvement.
Ask: Will you state in writing that our search queries, seed lists and saved searches are not used to train, tune or evaluate your algorithms, and not disclosed to your data supplier?
Feedback and usage analytics
Public claim only
The cookies policy states cookies facilitate login and that Google Analytics is used to gather anonymised usage statistics 'that allow us to better understand what you value or what interests you about our content, products or services'. Clause 1.7 states that by subscribing or requesting information users agree to receive marketing communications, with a right to opt out at any time. No in-product feedback or rating mechanism is described, and nothing states whether feedback affects ranking.
Ask: What usage telemetry is captured inside the search application itself, and can our account be excluded from analytics collection?
Retention of queries and results
Public claim only
The privacy policy states reasonable steps are taken to destroy or permanently de-identify personal information that is no longer needed, and that systems are in place for doing so. It sets no periods, and no retention statement of any kind covers search queries, seed patent lists, saved searches, result sets or exports. The trial terms show that results can be shared even where export is disabled, implying stored result sets, but nothing published says how long they are kept.
Ask: How long are our search queries, saved searches and result sets retained, and can retention be set to a period we choose?
Deletion on request and on exit
Not confirmed
The terms contain no deletion obligation for subscriber content on termination or expiry of a subscription, and no process for requesting deletion of search history. The privacy policy offers access and correction rights for personal information and says information no longer needed is destroyed or de-identified, but describes no deletion request route beyond the general contact details, and names no timeframe.
Ask: On cancellation, what is deleted, when, and will you confirm deletion of our account, search history and exports in writing?
Vendor access to content
Not confirmed
The privacy policy states that 'Our computer systems can only be accessed by authorised users who have been issued specific user identifiers and passwords' and that physical and electronic security measures are in place. Nothing published describes whether vendor staff can see a subscriber's queries or saved searches, under what approval, or in which country those staff sit; section 2 does state that support may involve working directly with a user on their search queries.
Ask: Which of your staff can see our queries and saved searches, from which countries, and is that access logged?
Access control and authentication
Public claim only
Access is by login with cookies used to maintain the session; the cookies policy states that removing cookies requires logging in on each use. Clause 1.9 restricts a subscription to named subscribers and forbids sharing outside the named subscriber's working group. Single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, password policy, role separation and administrator audit logs are not described anywhere on the pages read.
Ask: Is multi-factor authentication or SSO available, and can an administrator see which users ran which searches?
Encryption in transit and at rest
Not confirmed
No encryption statement of any kind appears on the four pages read. The privacy policy refers only to unspecified 'physical and electronic security measures' and to user identifiers and passwords. No security page, trust centre or technical measures document exists in the site map.
Ask: Is traffic to the application encrypted with TLS, is stored search data encrypted at rest, and who manages the keys?
Independent security assurance
Not confirmed
No certification or independent assurance is claimed anywhere on the pages read: no ISO/IEC 27001, no SOC 2, no penetration-test summary and no security questionnaire response. The absence is itself the finding; the site map returned only blog articles and the footer links to a single Terms and Conditions page with no security or trust document behind it.
Ask: Do you hold any independent security certification or recent penetration test, and will you complete our security questionnaire?
Contract, liability and forum
Public claim only
One published Terms and Conditions page governs all products, accepted by subscribing to a demonstration or paid account. Clause 1.10 names Ambercite Pty Ltd, ABN 71 154 692 707, of Level 10, 161 Collins St, Melbourne, as the contracting party and applies the laws of Victoria. The terms contain no limitation-of-liability clause, no indemnity, no service-level commitment, no data processing agreement and no Australian Privacy Principles clause; the remedies expressly addressed are refunds under section 2.
Ask: Will you sign a subscription agreement with confidentiality, data-handling and liability terms, since the published terms address none of them?
Cross-border transfers
Not confirmed
Nothing on the pages read states where data is stored or processed, or whether it leaves Australia. The privacy policy in section 4 refers to the 'National Privacy Principles contained in the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)' rather than to the Australian Privacy Principles that replaced them, and contains no overseas-disclosure statement of the kind Australian Privacy Principle 8 addresses. The application and trial are served from amberscope.com, which says nothing about hosting location.
Ask: In which countries are our queries processed and stored, and will you commit to Australian-only processing or to Australian Privacy Principle 8 terms?
Incident notification
Not confirmed
No breach notification commitment appears on any page read, and the privacy policy does not mention the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme or any notification period. The terms set no obligation on either party to report a security incident.
Ask: Within what period from discovery will you notify us of a security incident affecting our account, and who is the contact?
Change notice
Public claim only
Clause 1.4 reserves the right to make unilateral changes to the websites and clause 1.3 states the vendor does not warrant that outputs will not change over time. Clause 1.12 allows the terms to change for operational reasons, with an undertaking to email all subscribed users where a change, in the vendor's opinion, materially affects the terms. No notice is promised before a change to the algorithms, the similarity score or the underlying citation data.
Ask: What notice will we get before the similarity algorithm, the score or the data source changes, and can a prior version be re-run for an audit trail?
Export and exit
Not confirmed
The terms address refunds but say nothing about return, export or continued access to a subscriber's data on termination. Export of results to Excel is a paid-subscription feature, expressly disabled in the trial, and clause 1.2 limits the reproduction licence to material created while logged in and while the subscription was current. No exit or migration provision was found.
Ask: On cancellation, can we export our saved searches and result sets, in what format, and for how long do we retain the right to use exports already taken?
Connectors and third-party components
Public claim only
Clause 1.5 states the vendor may provide links to third-party websites, warrants nothing about the material on them and claims no relationship with their owners, and clause 1.3 states weblinks created by the websites may not remain current. The only third-party components named anywhere are Google Analytics in the cookies policy and an unnamed 'patent data supplier' in clause 3.4. The API is offered to patent offices and non-competing industry players.
Ask: List every third-party service in the delivery path of a search, and confirm none of them receives our query text.
Open-web retrieval
Not confirmed
Nothing on the pages read describes open-web search or retrieval. The described search operates over the vendor's own patent and citation database, and clause 3.3 limits coverage to jurisdictions where citation data can be obtained. Whether the product fetches anything from external sources at query time is not addressed.
Ask: Does a search retrieve anything from outside your own database at query time, and if so from where?
Automated actions
Not confirmed
No autonomous or agentic behaviour is described: the product returns a ranked list and a graphical citation view for the user to review, and a 'Licensing Potential' metric to prioritise opportunities. The terms contain no clause about automated actions or notifications taken on a user's behalf. A blog post title in the site map refers to the product being agentic before agentic AI became fashionable, but that post was not read and no such capability is described on the product page.
Ask: Can the product run standing searches or send alerts without a user action, and if so what triggers them?
Human review of outputs
Public claim only
Clause 3.1 requires professional review: outputs are intended to support further analysis and 'should not be used by themselves and without professional advice on the relevancy of the outputs to your unique circumstances', and data must not be relied on without further analysis by a qualified professional. Clause 3.5 states the products must not be relied on for freedom-to-operate searching. No in-product review, sign-off or provenance control is described.
Ask: What does the product show a reviewer about why a patent was ranked highly, so that the ranking can be checked rather than accepted?
