The development of innovative products is a major milestone – but before launching to market, a crucial question arises: Am I actually allowed to do this? This is precisely where the Freedom to Operate (FTO) analysis comes into play. It examines whether a product may infringe on existing intellectual property rights
Objective: Establish comparability of patents from different companies. Preparation for identify technology trends among competitors and in the industry. Assign individual patents to products without reading the patents themselves. All known technologies are recorded in the hierarchically arranged IPC (International Patent Classification). Each invention of a patent application is assigned
Objective: Determining the patent position of your own company in relation to the competition. Building a patent portfolio using espacenet. Research: A comprehensive patent database is provided by the EPO at https://worldwide.espacenet.com/. This database is also free of charge. There, activate the "Advanced Search" switch,
Objective: To identify the tasks of a patent manager, taking into account that there is little time available for the task and no special knowledge in the field of patents. The Patent Manager A patent manager who has limited working hours available for patent issues and lacks in-depth knowledge of
Patents are a right granted by the legislator for the exclusive use of an invention. The holder of a patent is granted the right to exclusively use their invention for a period of 20 years. It is a monopoly. The patent holder can prohibit third parties from using their invention.