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

Freedom-to-operate analysis is to prove that a proposed product or invention does not violate any active patents - mainly claims N, because no matter how well a patent specification may describe your product it is irrelevant if the patent does not accurately claim your product.

It is very important in-case of the innovation based start-up because, freedom-to-operate analysis also provides you a warning of the potential infringement as well it makes sure that you a plan a work around solution if you see any patent which is threat to your product and it also provokes you to invent or better solution for the same problem.

When it comes to cost as a service depends on the industry and the product and features involved in it and last but not the least Jurisdiction of launch of the product.

For doing this work you can hire a Patent Search Specialist for the analysis part and from the analysis if you know a potential patent hindering your product launch then hire a Patent attorney for his/ her legal advice.

Thanks
Goutham Killi

Hi Connor
A freedom to operate (FTO) search involves determining whether your making, using or selling or innovation will infringe the IP rights of any third party in the specific territories where you will do business. Usually this involves a search of public patent databases and design registration databases. While you do not "have to" engage a patent attorney to do this, it is highly recommended because FTO searching is quite a skill and you have the liability insurance of your patent attorney to fall back on if they get it wrong - whereas if you get it wrong ...
The cost of the service will vary significantly depending on the complexity and scope of your innovation (eg if executing your innovation spans several converging technology areas), and the number of geographical areas you need to cover. Some will get away with under Euro 5000, while others will eat up 10K to 20K to do it properly. I guess to some extent it also depends on the amount of investment you may need to sink into the development prior to hitting market - the bigger the investment the more certain you want to be that you can continue to operate. If its cheap to get to market, you might "try it on" and deal with any objections as they crop up. Of course, that is quite an inherently risky approach, but one some are willing to take.
Innovation Liberation Front is based out of New Zealand, but we help clients around the world with issues like this, and others on the path to freeing their ideas from whatever it is holding them back from the market.

Good luck!
Simon

"Freedom-to-Operate" analysis helps you to identify, if your product which you are going to launch in a particular market (country) is infringing any Patents granted in that particular market (country). So, if you are planning to launch your product into multiple markets, you may have to do a FTO for multiple markets. Generally, a product may involve multiple features for which a FTO is required and for each feature to analyse atleast 40 hours of expert's efforts are required. It's very difficult to analyze without seeing the product/ service that how many features are required to be analyzed. On the point, whether an innovation-based start-up should do the FTO, in principal the firm should do the FTO is rather a business decision to be made, inspite of a legal decision. Doing FTO will satisfy you that you are not infringing any patents, but it is not a legal mandate by a country's law. At the same time, FTO may help you in infringement suites, to get you an "innocent infringer" status. I believe, for a technical search and analysis for FTO, you may engage any Patent Information specialist too. However, for a legal analysis and advice, you should engage a country's Patent agent, for which you require the advice.

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