Ensure Your Invention’s Safe Launch with a Comprehensive FTO Search
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Unparalleled accuracy in strategy, relevancy, and reporting.
A Freedom to Operate (FTO) or infringement search or clearance search helps ensure the safe launch of your product, process, or service by identifying whether or not there is a risk of infringing on third-party rights. In other words, an FTO search determines the existence of enforceable IP rights claiming the features of your product, process, or service and which could hinder your commerce.
By making you aware of possible infringement risks early on in the product development stage, an FTO search can save you a lot of time and capital and help you build a commercial strategy that is secure and viable. Your approach to a potential patent barrier may vary: you may work around the troubling IP, enter into a licensing agreement with the third-party IP holder, or try to invalidate the obstructing IP.
Contact Us
Our team offers comprehensive FTO searches and related legal support services in New York, Washington, DC, and other major cities in the US and Canada. For more information, contact the Legal Advantage LLC office at (301) 637-6180 today.
Our Process
Because patent rights are territorial, our FTO search identifies active issued patents and pending published applications within your specific country or region of interest. We can also search for PCT applications that may enter into the national stage or expand the search to include foreign as well as expired patents.
We determine the scope of the search based on the features of the product, process, or service at issue. Any potentially relevant patents that come up during the search are flagged for checking. We analyze these patents to determine whether they pose an infringement risk to your product, process, or service, and also if they are active.
Our experts’ keen understanding of claim language and scope puts them in an excellent place to craft IP strategies that not only cover the features of your product, process, or service directly, but also target concepts that broadly encompass these features.
Once the search process is concluded, we provide an intuitive FTO report that includes the potential claims in specific patents, their bibliographic data, and the patents’ current legal status.