Patent Searching
Freedom to Operate Search
A Freedom to Operate Search is conducted to give an overview on the patent environment with respect to your product, to ensure that the release of the client’s product will not cause any form of infringement in the market.
It is restricted to only active or enforceable patents. Non-patent literature, scientific journals, etc. are not relevant in this search as they do not form potential threats. Jurisdiction of interest is a very important aspect while performing the search. A time period about 20 to 22 years is considered as the life of a patent.
An FTO is usually performed to identify access and mitigate the loss involved the commercial launch of a product. FTO is conducted in the following scenarios:
- Risk
- Due Diligence
- Launch of a Product
Invalidity/Validity Search
Invalidity/Validity Searches are exhaustive Prior Art Searches conducted to either validate the claims made by a patent or to invalidate one or more claims of a competitor’s patent.
It is a confirmation to the applicant that the patent can withstand litigation and its validity is undisputable, and no claim can be raised on the basis of prior public use or a prior invention. For each search, we provide a Claim chart representation of each Prior Art, wherein we define each element of the claim w.r.t. it’s functioning as mentioned in its description. A thorough and detailed analysis of all references is provided which includes feature to feature mapping.
Patent Searching
Novelty Searches/ Patentability Searches are asked for to gather a hoard of technical information or “prior-art” pertinent to the invention to assess its patentability based on novelty and non-obviousness/inventive step. This search is usually performed prior to the preparation of the patent application.
Note: For a Patentability/Prior Art Search there are no date constraints. Also it is not jurisdiction specific.
Landscape Search
A patent landscaping search will provide who is patenting in any chosen area of technology. Particularly important in early-stage R&D, the results from a patent landscaping search will help shape your business plan and align it with your intellectual property strategy.
