What are FTO and FTO ASSESSMENT?
A business is said to have “freedom to operate” if it is allowed to create, produce, and market its goods without fear of facing legal repercussions from other patent owners. Unfortunately, the right to free enterprise is not a universal one. Lawsuits alleging patent infringement may cause product release delays, full product withdrawals, years of development costs to be lost, as well as financial and reputational harm to shareholders. As a result, one must exercise caution and initiative to safeguard their interests. A Freedom-to-Operate (FTO) assessment or Clearance assessment is the primary method for achieving this, as it can give an inventor or business the assurance they need to commercialize a good or service without violating pre-existing patent rights.
Why you need FTO Searches?
- It is often advised to conduct FTO searches early in the product development process to avoid incurring significant development expenditures for creating infringing items and other infringement-related costs. This type of search will turn up abandoned patents. These patents that have expired can include a lot of beneficial technologies.
- Buying applicable patents could be a different choice to consider or getting a license from the patent holder for a set period of time may be an option or the product could be redesigned to prevent infringement.
Centriik’s detailed Approach to FTO searches?
- Categorize the relevancy of feature to indicate the “high”, “medium” and “low” relevancy of patents and products.
- Divide the relevant patents according to the relevancy of features in claims of patents or product.
- Claim chart mapping against the product or patent information.
- Accurate legal status of the identified documents.
- Native language capabilities in 16+ languages including CN, JP, KR, FR and DE.
- Legal opinion on demand.
- FTO Search Report Format: Spread-sheet report that includes keywords, IPC classes, search strings, project methodology, patents mapping as per the key features of the provided product and many other details related to project.
