7 June 2021
Commercialising your product in a new market is a tricky process. You need to be careful not to infringe a competitor's patent on a similar technology as stepping on their toes can have painful consequences, potentially costing you thousands of euros.
The easiest way to avoid this is with a freedom-to-operate (FTO) search, which shows you in advance any third-party IP rights that could block your entry to the market.
FTO searches are complex. They rely on tools that provide not only advanced options for full-text searches but also comprehensive legal event data. You have crucial assessments to make for each document in the results list, such as: Is the right still in force? When was the last fee payment? Is the right due to expire or have any term extensions been granted? So the tools and databases you use need to make this process as effective as possible.
The EPO's Global Patent Index (GPI) is an excellent starting point for your FTO analysis. GPI lets you perform detailed searches in the EPO's worldwide bibliographic, legal event and full-text data sets. Thanks to some recent enhancements - such as searchable full texts for several countries in 2020 - GPI is ready to help you with your FTO search.
Searching for expired French, German, English and European patents using keywords in claims and certain technical fields (IPC, CPC)
The example above combines the following features:
Navigation between the search hits and various document sections is straightforward, and the screenshot below shows the side-by-side view of claims and legal events.
We offer a range of different subscription models. Visit our shop for more information and prices.
Check out the GPI user manual and register for a free trial on the GPI web page.