A patent protects your invention; it does not tell you whether your product infringes someone else's. That second question – freedom to operate – is the one that stops launches, stalls diligence, and turns into litigation when it's skipped. Answering it early is dramatically cheaper than answering it in court.
Freedom-to-operate analysis
We search the patent landscape around your product, identify the claims that could plausibly read on it, and give you a practical read: clear, clear-with-changes, or genuinely at risk. The deliverable isn't a pile of search results – it's an analysis you can make a business decision on.
- Targeted claim-level analysis of the patents that matter, not a dump of everything adjacent
- Design-around counseling when a claim is in the way
- Timed to decision points: before tooling, before launch, before a raise
Non-infringement and invalidity opinions
When a specific patent is asserted against you – or you know one is out there – a formal written opinion from patent counsel does two jobs: it gives you a reasoned basis to proceed, and it can mitigate a later charge of willful infringement, which is what exposes a defendant to enhanced damages. Opinions are also what boards and acquirers ask for when a known risk surfaces in diligence.
Patentability opinions
Before you invest in drafting, a patentability assessment against the prior art tells you what scope is realistically available. Sometimes the honest answer is "don't file" – that answer is cheap now and expensive later.
Typical trigger: "Our biggest customer asked us to indemnify them," or "diligence flagged a competitor's patent." Both are answerable with analysis – and far better answered before signatures than after.