Clear Your Product Before You Launch. Freedom-to-Operate Search.
An FTO search answers the question that matters before you commit to tooling, inventory or a launch date: can you sell this, in this market, without infringing a live patent? We map in-force claims against your actual product features, rank the real risks, and show you the ways around them.
What You Get
A Clearance Read You Can Act On
Not a list of patent numbers. A ranked view of what could actually stop you, and what to do about each one.
How It Works
How an FTO Search Runs
Define the product
We turn your specs, drawings or datasheet into a precise feature list. FTO risk lives in specific features, so this step decides how useful everything after it is.
Set the territory
Markets, launch timeline and whether you are making, selling or importing — each changes which rights can be asserted against you.
Search the live art
In-force patents and pending applications that could mature into rights, across the relevant classifications and assignees, including families most keyword searches miss.
Read the claims
Element-by-element mapping against your features, with legal status and expiry confirmed per jurisdiction — a lapsed patent is not a blocker.
Rank and advise
Blockers, watch items and noise, each with the options: design around, license, challenge validity, or accept and monitor.
When To Run One
Run It While the Answer Can Still Change the Decision
The value of an FTO search collapses as commitments harden. Early, a blocking claim is a design change; late, it is a recall, a redesign or a licence negotiated from a weak position.
FTO vs Other Searches
Which Search Do You Actually Need?
These get conflated constantly, and the wrong one answers a question you did not ask.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about this service
What is a freedom-to-operate search?
An FTO search asks one question: can you make, use or sell your product in a given market without infringing someone else's live patent rights? It works outward from your product's actual features to the in-force claims that could cover them — which is the opposite of a novelty search, where the question is whether your own idea is patentable.
How is FTO different from an infringement analysis?
An infringement analysis starts from a patent, usually one someone has already asserted against you, and maps your product against its claims. An FTO search starts from your product and looks for any patent that could be a problem, before anyone has raised one. FTO is the clearance exercise you run before launch; infringement analysis is what you run when a specific patent is already in play.
How much does a freedom-to-operate search cost?
It depends on real variables rather than a list price: how many product features need clearing, how many jurisdictions, how crowded the art is, and whether you need a written opinion or a working risk read. A narrow single-market device search is a very different exercise from clearing a biologic across the US, EU and Japan. Tell us the product and the markets and we will scope it and quote before any work starts.
When should we run an FTO search?
Early enough that the answer can still change a decision. The cheapest time is while the design is fluid and a blocking claim can be engineered around; the most expensive is after tooling, launch or a funding round. Investors and acquirers increasingly ask for FTO in diligence, so running it late often means running it twice.
Do you provide a written FTO opinion?
We deliver the search and the analysis — the claim-by-claim read, the risk ranking and the design-around options. A formal legal opinion of non-infringement must be signed by qualified counsel, so where you need one for diligence or for a wilfulness defence we work alongside your attorney and provide the underlying evidence base. We will tell you plainly which of the two you need.
Which jurisdictions can you clear?
Any market where you intend to make, sell or import. Patents are territorial, so clearance is per country — a US clearance says nothing about Germany. In practice most searches cover the US plus the EPO states, and we add Japan, China, Korea, Canada or the Gulf as the commercial plan requires.
What do you need from us to start?
A technical description of the product and its key features — drawings, specs, a datasheet or a claim-style feature list all work — plus the markets and the launch timeline. The more precisely the features are defined, the tighter and more useful the search is, because FTO risk lives in specific features rather than in the product as a whole.
Find Out What Stands Between You and Launch
Send us the product and the markets. We will scope the search, tell you what it covers, and quote before any work begins.
- Feature-level claim mapping against in-force rights
- Clearance per market you intend to sell in
- Blockers separated from noise, with design-around options
- Scoped and quoted before work starts
Request an FTO Search
Tell us the product, the features and the markets. A senior searcher replies within one business day.
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