Why freedom to operate goes beyond just a search
A freedom to operate search, or FTO search for short, is a check to find out whether any product you plan to produce and commercialise is not going to infringe upon anyone else’s valid intellectual property rights. Although referred to as a search, the search is really just the starting point of a longer activity that should, at the end, provide a risk analysis or risk assessment. This assessment includes an opinion on the level of risk a specific invention poses and what intellectual property exists that limits freedom-to-operate.
Based on the outcome of the search, an organisation can then decide how to proceed – whether to license necessary technologies, whether to modify the invention or approach or, in some cases, whether to cease pursuing the project. In some cases, depending on the level of resource or investment that is to be committed to a project, a legal opinion will be sought. However, companies will not want to pay legal fees for every new potential project in the pipeline and will want to carry out some level of FTO analysis itself to rule out any obvious early instances of limitations to FTO, before escalating the project further.
In this interview, Juliana Melo, with an LLM in Intellectual Property and New Technologies from the Autónoma University of Madrid, provides her views on when and how organisations can conduct these early searches and the structure they should take. PatSnap and Juliana have also worked together to provide a series of videos on the topic so that, by the end, participants in the lectures will have a foundational understanding of what FTO analysis involves and what they should be looking for.
Join Academy today to access this free course
Your recommended content
-
Patsnap Surpasses US$100 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue
Category: Article | Category: News/PR
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Patsnap has reached a significant milestone of achieving $100M in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), marking an impressive 20% year-over-year growth in 2023. This milestone highlights the massive and meaningful value our platform brings to over 12,000 IP and R&D teams across 50 countries, driving efficiency, productivity, and collaboration.
-
Introducing Hiro, an AI assistant built for IP and R&D workflows
Category: AI advancements | Category: AI development | Category: AI-tools | Category: Article | Category: artificial intelligence
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Powered by Patsnap’s industry-specific LLM, Hiro is designed to streamline IP and R&D workflows from ideation to product launch. With its robust AI capabilities, Hiro brings a new level of efficiency, precision, and security to tasks that were once time-consuming and labor-intensive.What sets Hiro apart is that it draws from our large language model that’s been trained on market-leading patent records, academic papers, and proprietary innovation data. This ensures we deliver more accurate and reliable results for every prompt.
-
Powering the Future of Electric Vehicles: The Battle for Battery Innovation and Patents
Category: Article | Category: battery technology | Category: electric vehicle | Category: EV | Category: lithium ion | Category: lithium ion battery | Category: NEV | Category: new energy vehicles
Monday, April 22, 2024
In the ever-evolving landscape of innovation, the electric vehicle (EV) industry stands as a beacon of technological transformation. As we explore the patents propelling the EV revolution, Apple's venture serves as a poignant example of the challenges even industry giants face in this competitive arena. Join us on a journey through the global patent landscape, where the quest for superior power solutions unfolds, and where the true pioneers of the EV revolution are making their mark.