System and method for work flow templates in a professional services management system

摘要

There is disclosed method and apparatus for organizing intellectual property data according to activities related to intellectual property. Each activity is represented by an activity data structure containing at least some data pertinent to the activity. A plurality of activity data structures are made accessible through a user interface display in which an indication of one or more activity data structures are show in an order related to one or more dates associated with at least some of the activity data structures. Groups of activities may be assigned to a work flow data structure. A template may be used by a data processing system to create a plurality of activity data structures related to an intellectual property work flow. In addition, the activity data structures have attributes. The attributes are typed so as to allow indexing. The work flow data structure may include data that create activity data structures or add data to activity data structures contingent on an event input to the system.