Importance of Freedom to Operate Search in Launching New Products in the Market
The companies conduct market research before launching the product in the market, conduct market research to ensure that they have a successful product. Organizations might have distinct reasons of their own to conduct market research. Some of the reasons are below:
· Check if there is any requirement for their product.
· Recognize the market to launch its product
· Know about the competitors
· Build a plan for marketing
· Come up with the pricing.
It is essential to conduct market research, but also it is crucial to find out if your product has the Freedom to Operate (FTO).
You might be thinking if this has to be done by obtaining a license from the government professionals. But, this is nothing to do with the license. FTO is relevant to determine if your product or process will infringe on the claims of issued or pending patent applications. The product infringes upon the patent rights of any other product. If it violates, then you are required to strategize the launch of your product according to it.
Do you know what is FTO or Freedom to Operate and why you need to consider it?
In simple words, FTO is the freedom to commercialize a process without infringing on other patents’ rights. The commercialization of the infringing products might result in expensive lawsuits. Thus, an FTO search is highly essential to carry out before launching the product in the market.
How is FTO Search conducted?
It is required to be noted that the rights of patents are territorial. For instance, if anyone has a patent over a particular kind of “laptop” in the US and not in the UK, then one can launch that “laptop” in the UK without the stress of infringing the US patent. Thus, an FTO analysis for any process or product is particular to a territory and considers the region’s patents. So, if you are going to commercialize any product and want to find out whether you have the freedom to operate in the US, related patents in the US are considered.
To seek out, if your product is infringing on others’ patent rights in some country, a search is needed to discover all the related patents in that country. This search will consider the granted patents and patent applications that are not yet granted into consideration.
Now you might ask, why to consider the patent forms which are yet not granted, and how can your product be infringing upon such kind of patent forms. To answer this question, a published patent might be granted in the future, and once a patent is granted, they have the complete right to sue some product that has infringed their own patent rights.
Why carry out FTO search analysis and what advantages can you gain?
The Freedom to Operate search is required to be carried out at the initial stage of developing the product. You do not acquire vast costs of development in the process of developing infringing products that do not come in a legal issue later, as the charges of infringement.
Some of the advantages of FTO are listed below:
· Reduces the risk of getting sued by other companies for having infringed upon their patent rights
· The FTO search can dig out the patents deeper, which have been expired. Additionally, there might be several useful technologies that can be utilized from these expired patents
· Get a list of patents that are related to your technology or products and help you build strategies like:
- You are purchasing the patents which are related to your product such that you can get the FTO rights in that region.
- Getting a license from the patent holder for a particular time by working out a payment option. This will provide you with the complete right to operate without infringing on the other patent rights.
- If you are having a patent of your own, you can try to cross-licensing the patents to get the benefits.
- Redesigning your product/service in a way such that it does not infringe upon other patents rights
- Invalidate and try the patents in question such that you can gain FTO in the desired region
Conclusion
At last, Freedom to Operate search is an essential step that every technology organization must take before launching their product in the market, such as avoiding costly lawsuits and getting the knowledge about strategies that they can adopt to get FTO in the concerned territory.
Are you a technology company? Want to launch your product in the market? Then, get FTO analysis done by the Ingenious e-Brain experts. We can provide you with a complete search and help you adopt better strategies.