There is a long-held misconception that conducting a freedom to operate (FTO) exercise generates a ‘get out of jail card’ in the form of an FTO opinion. You pay a fee then if something untoward happens, you produce the FTO opinion, and the problems disappear.
Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. Irrespective of how detailed and how expensive your FTO has been, it gives no guarantee that you will ride through a serious legal challenge unscathed. It’s a risk assessment – not an insurance policy.
In this informal workshop we’ll explore FTO in a pure investment context.
We’ll start by looking at why the term FTO is often so misunderstood and importantly, what it isn’t. We’ll clarify what protection it doesn’t provide and the types of legal risks it won’t protect you against.
We’ll explain the approach to FTO an investor should reasonably expect to deploy (and how a lack of formal FTO shouldn’t be considered a weakness) and how to factor the scope of any necessary FTO against the value of the investment and the stage of development.
We’ll finish by looking at what FTO is needed to make a more informed investment decision. What we can learn from key competitors and their patent portfolios, how active watching will help keep you safer longer and how to identify mission critical innovation and protect your investment against the associated risk using ‘FTO Lite’.
We will be hosting this workshop in our Stockholm office (Riddargatan 10) at 5pm on Tuesday, October 17th. After the session we will be happy to answer all your questions while we enjoy some drinks and snacks.
Register for the event here.
