Freedom to Operate
Before launching a product or service in the market, it is important to conduct a freedom to operate (FTO) or a clearance search, to assess the risk of a potential infringement and to avoid subsequent litigations. The organizations should proactively perform an FTO search to identify patents that may potentially map the features of the product or service to be launched. Generally, the FTO search is restricted to a particular jurisdiction, however, it is prudent to search for international applications which can potentially enter the target jurisdictions to be sure of obtaining a patent. An FTO search involves a claim-specific search to locate claims that read on the features of the product or service to be launched in the market.
The benefit from the analysis
End product:
Our reports focus especially on claims of a patent and the search can be restricted to the geography of interest. The results are arranged in a well-documented format, including a detailed summary of results which helps our clients quickly view the relevant results. Legal Status: - The legal status of the respective results is also mentioned in the report, so that one can notice whether the patent is in force, published, pending, or already expired. Generally, live patents or patents in force are considered for analysis.
We also go the extra mile to cover patents with term extensions. Besides we can deliver a separate list of dead patents to give an overview of the relevant assignees and products that can be free to use.
