Patentability
Question: can I get a patent on this?
Looks at: all prior art anywhere, in force or expired, published before your date.
Decided by: patent offices during examination.
Result: a view on novelty and inventive step.
Service
Understand patent risk before the market decides for you
Freedom to operate asks a different question from patentability. Patentability asks whether your idea is new. Freedom to operate asks whether making, using, or selling your product could fall within someone else's live claims in a specific country. A product can be perfectly novel and still infringe.
At a glance
- Who it is for
- Startups preparing to launch, raise, or manufacture
- You provide
- The product as it will actually ship: features, materials, and how it works
- You receive
- A defined analysis scope: product, features, countries, and cut-off date
Who this is for
- Startups preparing to launch, raise, or manufacture
- Product and R&D teams locking a design
- Companies entering a new country with an existing product
What you provide
- The product as it will actually ship: features, materials, and how it works
- Target countries and expected launch dates
- Manufacturing and supply arrangements where they affect risk
What you receive
- A defined analysis scope: product, features, countries, and cut-off date
- A documented search strategy and classification logic
- Potentially relevant in-force patent families with legal status noted
- A claim-to-feature mapping table for the closest families
- Areas of uncertainty stated explicitly, with the questions counsel should resolve
- Design-around directions where they are apparent
Process
How this work runs
Each step has an output you can read. If a step changes the answer to "stop here", we tell you at that step rather than at the end.
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01
Scope
Define the product, the features that matter, the markets, and the date of the analysis.
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02
Construct
Build the search logic and classifications around product features, not marketing language.
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03
Identify
Find potentially relevant in-force families in the chosen jurisdictions.
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04
Map
Compare independent claims against the product feature by feature.
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05
Status
Check legal status, term, and territory — and record where the status is uncertain.
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06
Report
Deliver evidence, reasoning, and the specific points for qualified legal review.
Do not confuse the two
Patentability and freedom to operate answer different questions.
Teams lose money by assuming one answers the other. It does not, in either direction.
Freedom to operate
Question: could selling this product infringe someone's live rights?
Looks at: in-force claims in the specific countries you operate in.
Decided by: courts, applying national law.
Result: risk mapping and questions for qualified counsel.
Limits of this work
A freedom-to-operate analysis reduces uncertainty; it cannot remove it. Pending applications may be unpublished, legal status data can lag, claims can be amended, and infringement is ultimately a legal question decided under national law. We provide technical search and claim-mapping support; an opinion on infringement must come from a qualified patent attorney or advocate in the relevant jurisdiction.
Often taken next
- Patent landscape — Map who is filing what, where, and which technical areas are still open.
- Prior-art search — Structured searching of patent and non-patent literature, with the strategy documented.
- Questions people ask before starting
Not sure this is the right service?
Describe the situation and we will name the step that answers your question first — even when that step is not one of ours.