How much does a freedom-to-operate analysis cost?

Hi, FTO (FREEDOM TO OPERATE) is a way to check the status of your product marketing in any specific jurisdiction is infringing any third party patent rights in that jurisdiction or not. For any size of company, this is a very important step before product launching specifically in case of any future patent infringement case it will help to save you from any punitive damage (condition applied). For small company, it is the part of their successful product launching and presenting their company in front of various investors. Further, the cost of FTO has 2 important steps: 1. cost of fto search, 2. cost of attorney opinion with respect to the search report. In general, cost of search depends on jurisdiction of search, domain of product (if it is in mobile domain then searcher have to analyse a number of patents but if it is in metal technology then number of patent to be analyzed will be less), complexity of product and language translation (if you are launching a product in non-English speaking country). The strategy of conducting FTO search should be as broad as possible so that any important patent should not be missed in the search report. Normally companies hire patent search service provide for various FTO searches and sometimes use more than one firm for the same search due to high importance of this step and companies want to be doubly sure that their product launching won’t harm them by any future patent infringement suits. In general, based on our experience, it took 40-60 hours of time in executing this type of search depending on the conditions discussed above. After this step, companies move to local attorney (attorney in specific geography where product is going to launch because patent law changes from country to country) to take their signed view on launching the product in that market. Usually it takes 8-12 hour of work to review the report and propose a FTO status with respect to that report.
I think, I have answered your query here.

Regards,
Ashutosh