Saturday, July 21, 2012

Role of Freedom to Operate (FTO) Search in Competitive Intelligence

Freedom to Operate search is an approach that entangles clearance or freedom search in a legal jurisdiction area. It is used to check or examine the legal intellectual property protection of new technology or invention or patent in any country.
It gives exact idea or information about the chances of infringement in the concerned nation where the company or organization is seeking for launching their products or technologies.
Role Played by FTO Search in Competitive Intelligence
1. FTO Search provides all relevant information about the life-time of a patent (20 years for utility patents and 14 years for design patents in USPTO) or claim features of any contending organization or company. For instance, priority date, maintenance fee payment details, infringements by any other third party, jurisdiction rules, territory region of a patent or claim etc.
2. It enlightens the future outcomes of the new technology or product or development program that is to be launched by a company or organization in a country. So, it provides a detailed techno-legal interpretation of intellectual property protection related to pre-launched products or technologies or patents by the competitors.
3. Sometimes, Contending organizations or companies signed a non-exclusive cross-license agreement. According to it, each company which signed in agreement will have some scope or authority in the intellectual property data of other agreement signed companies.
This agreement provides more research and development opportunities in the inter-disciplinary fields of adjacent companies. Patent litigation, due diligence and other legal problems would be easily sort out, due to mutual understanding of these companies.
On the whole, Freedom to Operate search will be easy to each company which has membership of such non-exclusive cross-licensed agreement. The risks of infringement get minimized. Competitive intelligence will be more productive because the chances of failure of ideas or plans get decreased.
Some more benefits of non-exclusive cross-license agreement
- More consummated cost FTO search.
- Pledging of assumption or future planning along with competitive intelligence.
- Providing more resources for data mining.
- More business economic growth caused by limited infringement or litigation.
4. Others
Freedom to Operate search provides
- More significant data for patent landscape analysis during the competitive intelligence.
- Easy way to connect with the global activities of a competitor company related to their intellectual property advancements.
- Information about developmental programs of the competitor companies over the world.
- Enhancement in success rate of new technology plans.
Sandeep Kumar
Business IP Seeker, Intern at Patent Services India
Email: sbiosss@gmail.com


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7165093

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