Case Study: Quantum Computing Freedom to Operate: Clearing a 17,514-Family Thicket

A quantum computing freedom to operate analysis has to answer a question no landscape chart can: of the tens of thousands of quantum patents on file, which in-force claims actually read on the product you are about to ship, and what do you do about the ones that do? This representative engagement shows how PerspireIP cleared a superconducting-qubit control-systems startup to launch in the United States and Europe — not by counting patents, but by mapping its product features against the specific independent claims held by the handful of owners that dominate the field.

The Challenge

A venture-backed startup building cryogenic control electronics for superconducting quantum processors came to us eight weeks before a planned product launch and a Series B raise. Its investors had asked the one question founders in a crowded field cannot wave away: can you sell this without being sued, and can you prove it? The company had a strong engineering story and no idea where it stood against the patent estates of the incumbents it was about to compete with.

The scale of the problem was the problem. The quantum computing patent landscape now spans 17,514 patent families, and it is extraordinarily concentrated — the top five owners hold roughly 48% of the ranked portfolios, according to PatSnap’s 2026 landscape data. IBM alone holds 4,388 families, more than 1.8 times second-placed Google’s 2,385, with Microsoft (1,175), China’s Origin Quantum (1,135) and D-Wave (975) filling out the top tier. A new entrant does not face a diffuse field of thousands of small owners; it faces a few very large, very deliberate portfolios whose claims it has to get around.

Timing sharpened the risk. The EPO and OECD reported in December 2025 that quantum-computing patenting has grown roughly twentyfold over the last decade and overtook quantum communication as the most active area in 2022. The client was entering the field at the exact moment the incumbents were filing fastest, which meant the prior-art wall was getting taller every quarter the launch slipped.

Our Approach

We ran the quantum computing freedom to operate analysis in four stages, because an FTO opinion is only as good as the link between a product feature and a specific enforceable claim. A landscape tells you who is active; an FTO tells you whether you infringe. The two are not the same exercise, and conflating them is how startups get blindsided.

• Product teardown to claim-readable features. We decomposed the control stack into the features a patent examiner would recognise as claim elements — qubit readout and feedback timing, pulse-shaping and calibration, cryogenic signal routing, and the error-correction interface — so that every later search mapped to something the product actually does.
• Jurisdiction-scoped, in-force search. We searched only for granted, in-force claims in the client’s commercial markets — the United States and the EPO states — because an expired patent, an abandoned application or a grant in a country you will never ship to cannot block you. That alone cut the 17,514-family field to a working set a human could actually read.
• Owner-first triage. Given the concentration, we charted the dominant portfolios first — IBM, Google, Microsoft and the trapped-ion and annealing specialists — and separated foundational method claims (error correction, control architecture) from narrower implementation claims the client could design around.
• Claim charting and risk grading. For the families that survived triage we built claim charts against the product features and graded each as clear, design-around, licence, or challenge, with a documented rationale an investor’s counsel could audit.

The sequence matters. Scoping to in-force claims in two jurisdictions removed most of the noise; owner-first triage concentrated effort on the portfolios statistically most likely to contain a blocking claim; and only the survivors earned the expensive, defensible work of a claim chart. An FTO that charts everything charts nothing in time for a launch.

What the Quantum Computing Freedom to Operate Analysis Showed

The decisive finding was that the blocking risk was concentrated, not diffuse. The great majority of the client’s genuine exposure sat inside a small number of foundational portfolios — overwhelmingly IBM’s, whose 4,388 families span quantum algorithms, superconducting hardware and error correction and therefore create deep prior-art coverage precisely where a superconducting-control startup operates. Concentration is a double-edged finding: it raises the stakes of each individual portfolio, but it also means a focused design-around and licensing strategy can clear most of the risk.

The second finding was that error correction is the contested frontier, and the client’s interface to it mattered more than its core electronics. IBM leads quantum-error-correction filings and is patenting adaptive schemes built on the surface code for superconducting qubits; Google has filed around its “Willow” architecture, including error-correcting-code implementations and the feedback-control loops that stabilise qubits. The client’s fastest control loop touched exactly that territory, so two independent claims there were graded design-around rather than clear.

The third finding was geographic. The United States is by far the densest jurisdiction — roughly 10,300 of the landscape’s records are US filings, against about 3,631 at the EPO — so a feature could be clear in Europe and exposed in the US. That split let the client plan a staged launch: ship first where it was clear, and close the US design-arounds in parallel rather than holding the whole product behind the worst single market.

The Outcome

The deliverable was a launch the client’s board and investors could underwrite, with a documented basis for every risk call. Every figure below is a scenario figure illustrating the shape of the work, not a measured result for a named client.

• A ranked exposure map reducing a 17,514-family field to a short list of genuinely relevant in-force portfolios, dominated by a single owner.
• Two features re-engineered around specific IBM and Google error-correction and feedback-control claims, preserving performance while moving clear of the independent claims charted.
• One narrow licence-or-challenge call isolated and costed, so the board chose deliberately rather than discovering it in a demand letter.
• A US-versus-EPO risk split that supported a staged, Europe-first launch instead of a blanket hold.
• An FTO memo and claim-chart appendix investors’ counsel could audit during Series B diligence.

With that in hand, the client launched in its clear markets on schedule, carried a defensible freedom-to-operate opinion into its raise, and spent its design-around budget on the two features that actually needed it — not on a field of thousands of patents that never read on its product.

What This Means for Similar Matters

The lesson that travels beyond this matter is that a quantum computing freedom to operate analysis is a claim-mapping exercise, not a counting exercise. A field of 17,514 families looks un-clearable until you scope it to in-force claims in your actual markets and chart your product features against them; then it resolves into a handful of portfolios and a short list of decisions.

The second lesson is that concentration changes strategy. When the top five owners hold roughly half the field and one owner holds a quarter of the leaders’ families, owner-first triage beats keyword-first search. You clear the field fastest by charting the portfolios most likely to contain a blocking claim, deciding each exposure, and leaving the long tail for monitoring rather than paralysis.

Why Timing Raises the Stakes: A Field Filing Faster Every Year

Freedom to operate is a moving target in quantum because the prior-art wall is still being built. The EPO–OECD study published in December 2025 found that international patent families across quantum technologies grew roughly sevenfold between 2005 and 2024, at a compound annual growth rate near 20% since 2014 — an order of magnitude faster than the roughly 2% seen across all technologies. Annual quantum-computing filings in the landscape data climbed from about 843 families in 2017 to a peak of 3,113 in 2023 before publication lag obscures the most recent years.

For a new entrant, that trajectory has a practical consequence: an FTO opinion has a shelf life. Claims that are pending today will grant tomorrow, and a feature that is clear this quarter can face a newly granted claim the next. The right response is not a one-time clearance but a clearance plus a monitoring watch on the dominant owners’ new grants in the client’s technology area — so the design-around decisions stay ahead of the filings, not behind them.

Data Sources

The market and patent data referenced above comes from:

• EPO & OECD — Mapping the Global Quantum Ecosystem (Dec 2025) — Joint EPO/OECD study: quantum patent families up ~7x (2005–2024), ~20% CAGR since 2014, quantum computing the most active area and growing ~20x in a decade
• PatSnap — Quantum Computing Patent Landscape 2026 — 17,514 families; top owners (IBM 4,388; Google 2,385; Microsoft 1,175); top-5 concentration ~48%; US/EPO/PCT jurisdiction split
• Foley & Lardner — Why Now Is the Window to Secure Foundational Quantum Patents (Oct 2025) — Practitioner analysis of foundational quantum patenting and the freedom-to-operate pressure it creates for new entrants

Discuss a Similar Matter

Related PerspireIP work: freedom to operate analysis service · quantum computing patent intelligence · who owns quantum computing patents · quantum computing patent trends.

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