Companies, large and small, all need to ensure that, as far as possible, their potential product, or process, will not infringe any existing products or patents. In this training class we will review what is FTO, when and how to prepare for FTO searching and analysis, how to stage an FTO exercise according to the product development stage, and what you can do when your budget is limited. Keeping a project log, writing up your strategy, understanding how to decide on relevance of retrieved art is included. The training will also cover how to analyse the results, and how best to report your findings.
This course is aimed at those with some experience of patent searching who need to extend their expertise in freedom to operate search and analysis. We recommend that attendees have undertaken CIIPM’s Core Patent Search Skills training or a similar course.
Course Outline
- Definitions of freedom to operate, freedom to use, IP risk assessment and clearance.
- Why, when and how FTO exercises should be undertaken
- FTO scope and comparison to other search types
- Search skills for FTO
- Understanding
- geographic focus
- appropriate time periods
- patent families
- Company and inventor name searching
- Subject searching
- Using words,synonyms and key terms
- Using classifications,indexing and thesauri
- Resources for FTO exercises
- Databases for search; registers for legal status, tools for managing analyses
- Practical session
- Demonstration of a model answer
- Search for FTO purposes
- balancing recall and precision
- claims versus full text searching
- Legal status
- Understanding in-force
- Finding the legal status
- Analysis and reporting of results
Who should attend?
Those working in R&D, Intellectual Property managers, IP Engineers, Innovation managers, Technology innovators, strategic business development roles, Trainee Patent and Trademark attorneys.
Training provided by:
Jane List, Extract Information
Stuart Newbold, PSIM
