the market due to infringement disputes, which may financially damage the business as well as damage relationships with customers, distributors and other business partners. We therefore see the FTO clearance process as an important step, if not a crucial step, prior to launching a new product or services to the market by a company. What is the general process involved in conducting a patent search and producing a freedom to operate (FTO) opinion? In general, patent searches will be conducted based on the subject product or service to identify relevant issued patents and pending patent applications in the jurisdiction or jurisdictions concerned, such as where the product or service is going to be imported, manufactured, marketed, offered for sale or sold. The searches may include keywords searches based on key features of the product or process concerned and the corresponding classifications, such as the International Patent Classification (IPC) and USPTO patent classification. Some searches may require further searches based on details of assignees and/or inventors of the relevant prior art technology known to the clients. We suggest that both pending patent applications and granted patents are covered by the searches to ensure a more comprehensive coverage of searched subject matter in the relevant jurisdictions. As mentioned, the searches should be focused on the jurisdictions where the business activities for the product or service are required. However, we should also consider any international patent cooperation treaty (PCT) patent applications which are still within the time limits for national phase entry – i.e. within 30-32 months from the EXPERT INSIGHT 55 Patent searching is by nature an inexact process and it is always difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee that any particular search is exhaustive of all potentially relevant documents.
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