Freedom to Operate

A Freedom to Operate (FTO) or Clearance Search must be carried out in the appropriate jurisdictions before a good or service is released onto the market. By taking this proactive measure, you can assess the likelihood of future legal conflicts and lessen the chance of potential infringement. FTO searches usually concentrate on a single country, but for complete certainty, it's important to expand the search to foreign applications that might potentially enter the target jurisdictions. In order to find any patent claims that might be applicable to the characteristics of the planned good or service, an FTO search involves a detailed review of patent claims. This procedure gives you the assurance you need to launch your offering with confidence.

1. Recognizing the Technology

We fully immerse ourselves in the field of interest during this first phase, acquiring a profound comprehension of the technology.

2. Searching

We conduct a thorough search across patent databases.

Our search tactics include:

Searching using keywords

IPC, USC, and CPC classifications are among the classes that are searched.

Searching based on inventor and assignee.

using citation search to find relevant patents.

We use databases such as Orbit (from Questel, which covers over 100 jurisdictions) for patents., Google Patent, Derwent Innovation (which covers around 100 jurisdictions globally), and Espacenet.

Non-patent literature searches collect pertinent prior art from relevant databases, including ScienceDirect, PubChem, Pubmed, CiteseerX, Google, and Google Scholar, among others.

3. Reporting and Analysis

Finding the pertinent patent references based on screening based on the title, abstract, and claims.

The organization of pertinent references into distinct categories, also known as taxonomy, enables a methodical comprehension of the technological environment. After classification, the results are carefully examined, and we use the data to identify patterns and gain new insights.