Whether you need to assess potential infringement prior to a product launch, or to plan out your next phase of technical development – Sagacious IP’s Freedom To Operate (FTO) searches are designed to help you identify potential roadblocks that may need to be licensed or invalidated; as well as guide product design decisions and/or uncover design around technologies.
Detailed FTO searches with multiple language search options
Detailed FTO searches with multiple language search options
A Comprehensive Approach to FTOs – The Sagacious Way
At Sagacious IP, we conduct a thorough search to identify patents with claims that could prevent you from manufacturing or selling a certain product or practicing a process in a specific jurisdiction. These searches are detailed enough to guide you in making sound business decisions.
Our detailed FTO searches include:
- Categorisation of patents to indicate the threat level
- Claim chart mapping against the product information.
- Accurate legal status of the identified documents
- Claim restrictions in case of related patents
- Native language capabilities in 16+ languages including CN, JP, KR, FR and DE.
- Legal opinion on demand.
- FTO Search Report Format:
- MS PPT Report: The report includes visual technical analysis based on the identified references. It also includes claim chart mapping of the relevant identified references.
- Excel report: An excel file 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.
Sagacious & FTOs
Experience
32,000 hours of FTO Search completed
Projects
400+ FTO projects completed
Some Clients
Brann, White & Case LLP, Abitz & Partner, Patentanwälte mbB
Global Experience
Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, USA
Testimonials
Our Clients
Why Us?
- Product review – comprehensive identification of features – both state of the art & protected. We cover every feature from all perspectives – method, system, individual parts of the product and combination thereof.
- Understanding of laws from different countries – considering broadest claim scope - infringement possibility.
- Also the claim construction is taken to the broadest possible – keeping prosecution history & specs support in mind.
- Comprehensive searches covering the broadest possible claims – multiple iterations.
- 100+ countries covered – even some obscure countries are covered – including different rights including utility patents, utility models & design rights.
- Accurate legal status analysis – as this is very important.
- Analysis based on latest claim sets.
- Detailed mapping reporting with Expert comments on each result – visual mapping also available to show how claims are relevant for the product.
- Quarterly updates available for FTO search reports – covering legal status changes, claim changes in previously identified results, and new results.
- Liability Insurance is also applicable and covers our reporting.
- We design the communication in a way that the FTO search reporting is covered under attorney client privilege.
- We also can conduct structure & sequence-based searches including expertise in Markush structure searches.
Technology Capabilities:
Impact Stories
Quick and Accurate Clearance Searches for the entire product line
A US-based leading manufacturer and distributor of diagnostic imaging agents as well as radiopharmaceuticals approached Sagacious IP for Freedom to Operate (FTO) searches for its upcoming product releases. Sagacious created multiple proposals covering various features of the products and delivered the FTO results in an easy perusable format to enable the attorneys to make informed decisions.
Assisting a US based FBA Acquirer Firm on running clearance searches against various products before acquisition
The client worked in the fastest growing domain of acquiring FBA brands and needed quick IP due diligence before the acquisition process. There was an urgent requirement of running clearance searches against 100+ products offered by the retailers / sellers. The clearance projects involved conducting design based FTO searches. With quick turn arounds needed, Sagacious allocated resources worked quickly. These searches were performed for ensuring an infringement-free product. Given the custom nature of the requirements, the final report also included custom sections covering an overview of infringement risk for each product and country-wise segregation of the findings to assess the infringement risk in each country of interest. The report also included a legal opinion from patent attorneys from different jurisdictions. This one-stop solution enabled the client to completely transfer all their clearance work to us.
Custom Patentability cum FTO Searches for a Leading US-based Food Company
A renowned US-based food company approached Sagacious IP with a unique requirement of a patentability cum FTO search. As part of the project, the client wanted to iteratively work with Sagacious to refine their products with quick patentability searches followed by a comprehensive FTO search. The final reports delivered helped the client in filing strong patent applications as well as achieving infringement free products.
Breaking the Chinese language barrier for an FTO search
A Japanese automotive company was facing language barriers in its patent searches and reached out to Sagacious. They needed multiple FTOs conducted in China before their next launch, Sagacious India and China team worked together to deliver the multiple FTOs in a cost effective but highly accurate way to ensure that Chinese patents were covered using Chinese language searches. The final report containing Chinese references was created in English language for easy understanding of the client.
FTO Searches for the UK based R&D centre of a prominent Japanese Printing Supplies & Hardware company
The UK based business unit of a leading Japanese company approached Sagacious IP for conducting multiple FTO searches in Europe region. The objective was to perform in-depth clearance searches before they launched new products in the printing supplies & hardware domain in Europe. The project involved in depth searching in multiple European languages and was completed successfully with the final reports being very well received.
Comprehensive FTO Searches for both US & EU patent laws
A leading global law firm best known for its experience and quality in IP protection works with Sagacious IP for its FTO projects. Sagacious IP has been a search partner of the firm for over 10 years working with multiple attorneys at various locations and has been handling projects from multiple domains ranging from biotechnology to mechanical to electronics and telecom. In the FTO projects, Sagacious team works on delivering top of the line comprehensive FTO search reports that provide the easy to interpret report with comments, claim mapping and the latest legal status updates. The reports are also structured to provide results relevant as per the differences in US & EU patent laws.
FAQs
A Freedom-to-Operate (FTO) search also called clearance search or infringement analysis checks whether a product used, or a process performed by an entity is infringing on any claim of an active patent.
An FTO search should typically be conducted as early as possible in a product or process development cycle.
FTO searches are carried out on granted patents and sometimes also on pending patent applications. Further, these searches need to be as comprehensive as possible. As a result, these searches are time-consuming. Depending on the complexity of the product and the countries where the search is to be conducted, an FTO report can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars (starts at US $500) to a few thousand dollars (can go as high as US $20,000). Usually, a patent search company will study the product and provide a detailed proposal including search strategies and costs within 24 hours or so. Most of the times such proposals are free and non-binding and could be a good way to judge the cost and capabilities of the company as well as understand more about your search requirements.
Any company or individual inventor can conduct an FTO search to determine whether it has the freedom to operate/use an invention/product in a specific jurisdiction.
Our Patent Information Searching Services
Are You Planning To:
- Launch New Products?
- Expand to New Markets?
- Discover New Licensing Opportunities?
- Identify Infringing Patents?
Leverage Sagacious IP’s Custom FTO Searches to Gather Business-Critical Knowledge!
Free Samples - FTO Search Reports
Checkout our samples (reports) in different technology/industry domains
Sample
Freedom to Operate Search Report for ICT domain
(Information and Communications Technology and related topics)
Sample
Freedom to Operate Search Report for Engineering domain
(Automotive, Mechanical, Electrical and related topics)
Sample
Freedom to Operate Search Report for Life-Sciences & Chemistry domain
(Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices and related topics)
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