How Patlytics Quickly and Affordably Automates Freedom to Operate (FTO) Analysis

For companies bringing new products to market, Freedom to Operate (FTO) analysis is one of the most critical, and often expensive, steps in the innovation process. Whether launching a medical device, software platform, or industrial product, organizations must understand whether their product risks infringing third-party patent claims across key jurisdictions to avoid costly litigation or forced redesigns.

Traditionally, FTO searches have been slow, fragmented, and heavily dependent on outside counsel. Analysis is often manual and time-consuming, requiring professionals to manually synthesize large amounts of material. Costs can escalate quickly, especially when searches span global markets, and timelines often stretch from weeks to months.

Today, AI-powered patent platforms like Patlytics are changing that, making FTO analysis faster, more affordable, and easier to integrate into the entire patent lifecycle

What Is Freedom to Operate (FTO)?

Freedom to Operate (FTO) refers to the ability to commercialize a product or service without infringing existing, in-force patent claims. An FTO analysis typically involves:

• Identifying potentially blocking patents
• Reviewing active claims across relevant jurisdictions
• Assessing whether claims read on a product’s features
• Evaluating infringement risk before launch

FTO is not about patentability, it is about risk management, due diligence, and protecting the business from costly litigation or forced redesigns.

The Problem With Traditional FTO Searches

Many teams still rely on manual workflows and outside counsel to conduct FTO searches. While effective, this approach often introduces challenges:

• High and Unpredictable Costs: Traditional analysis requires manually synthesizing large amounts of material, often leading to fees of $20,000 to $50,000 for deep investigations.
• Long Turnaround Times: Manual searches can take weeks, delaying go-to-market timelines.
• Limited Visibility: Analysis is often reactive and fragmented across tools that do not connect to existing IP management systems.
• Static Analysis: It is difficult to update traditional analysis as products evolve.

Example: A Medical Device Company Preparing for Launch

Consider a medical company preparing to launch a new device in the U.S., Europe, and China.

Key questions arise immediately:

• Are there active patents that could block commercialization?
• Which claims present the highest infringement risk?
• Can risks be identified early enough to support design-arounds?
• How can results be shared with internal teams and counsel efficiently?

A comprehensive freedom to operate patent search platform must be able to flag conflicting claims worldwide, visualize overlap with product features, and integrate cleanly into existing IP systems.

This is where Patlytics comes in.

How Patlytics Automates and Accelerates FTO Analysis

Patlytics provides an affordable, AI-powered solution for FTO and patent risk analysis, helping teams cut outside counsel costs while improving speed and visibility.

1. Faster, More Affordable Patent Search for FTO

Patlytics enables users to perform FTO-related exercises directly within the platform, replacing manual and expensive traditional methods. Users can upload various materials describing products to be launched, including PDFs, PPTX slides, DOCX files, and invention transcripts. The system uses AI to automatically parse these documents to extract and organize key product features, ensuring that the clearance analysis is accurately tailored to the technical specifics of the product.

The platform then quickly searches for, screens, and analyzes hundreds of potentially relevant patents and applications. By evaluating all independent claims of identified patents, Patlytics helps teams pinpoint specific risks before a product launch. This automated approach significantly reduces reliance on expensive search services, with organizations reporting an 80% reduction in project time using Patlytics and cost savings of $20,000 to $30,000 per claim chart.

2. Global Jurisdictional Coverage

FTO risks rarely stop at one country, and Patlytics provides a single platform to evaluate these global threats. A dedicated FTO module streamlines the identification of blocking patents across major global jurisdictions. The platform currently supports searching, screening, and charting for:

• United States
• Europe (EP)
• China (CN)
• Japan (JP)
• Korea (KR)
• WIPO (PCT)

3. Automated Claim Mapping and Risk Visualization

Using its AI engine, Patlytics automatically generates element-by-element (limitation-level) claim charts that map potentially blocking patent claims directly to a company’s product materials. This granular analysis allows teams to:

• Visualize overlaps: Use Color-Coded Indicators of Confidence to see exactly where product features intersect with patent claims. Individual limitations are rated as Disclosed (Green), Suggested (Orange), or None (Grey).
• Prioritize review: Review overall patent risk classifications (High, Medium, Low, or None) to prioritize meaningful intersections in a large portfolio.
• Support strategic decisions: Evaluate results to identify potential design-arounds or re-designs for products or services to navigate identified risks.
• Apply determinations: Users can assign statuses to results, such as "Needs Technical Review," "Needs Further Review," "Clear," or "High Risk," and add manual analysis in notes.

4. Litigation-Ready Evidence and Exportable Outputs

Patlytics bridges the gap between early-stage FTO review and downstream enforcement or defense by providing structured, citation-backed claim charts. These outputs can be:

• Shared efficiently: Export structured data and charts into Word or Excel formats to share with internal stakeholders or outside counsel.
• Prepared for litigation: Generate "contention-style" charts featuring pin citations directly to the specification for instant verification and legal accuracy.
• Integrated into drafting: Run FTO clearance analyses directly from a patent draft within the workspace, allowing for rapid iteration of claims to avoid existing art before filing.
• Secured for the enterprise: Patlytics provides an absolute guarantee that it does not use customer data to tune or train its AI models, ensuring that sensitive product disclosures remain strictly confidential.

FTO as Part of a Broader Patent Lifecycle Strategy

One of the biggest advantages of using Patlytics for FTO is that it does not operate in isolation. Patlytics provides an all-in-one workspace that supports the entire patent lifecycle. This integrated approach ensures that FTO insights are connected to every stage of innovation, including:

• Accelerated Invention Harvesting: Generating structured and tailored Invention Disclosure Forms (IDFs) from various materials, such as slides, PDFs, and transcripts.
• Tailored Patent Drafting: Converting IDFs directly into complete, refined patent application drafts using contextual AI agents and custom templates.
• Early "Pressure-Testing": While still in the drafting module, users can perform in-workspace analysis to check for novelty, evaluate § 112 issues (written description and enablement), and run FTO clearance analyses before a single filing occurs.
• Comprehensive Risk Analysis: Utilizing dedicated modules for invalidity (addressing § 102 and § 103) and infringement detection across one patent or hundreds.
• Strategic Enforcement & Defense: Supporting litigation, licensing, and enforcement through citation-backed claim charts, contention-style charts, and SEP analysis to determine essentiality to global standards like 5G and Wi-Fi.

This end-to-end visibility allows teams to identify FTO risks early, often before significant R&D or commercialization costs are incurred. By eliminating the "export-import" friction of fragmented tools, Patlytics enables practitioners to rapidly iterate on claims and carry critical insights forward as products and portfolios evolve.

Reducing Risk While Cutting Outside Counsel Costs

By automating the most time-intensive aspects of FTO analysis, Patlytics helps organizations:

• Reduce dependence on outside counsel for preliminary searches: In-house teams can optimize outside-counsel engagement by conducting high-level preliminary investigations internally to determine the strength of a potential case beforehand. This proactive approach helps avoid spending $20,000 to $50,000 for outside firms to investigate infringement risks.
• Shorten FTO timelines from weeks to days: The platform can deliver an ~80% reduction in project time for patent workflows, with documented cases of 100-hour projects being completed in only 20 hours. Specific research tasks that traditionally take hours can be finished in minutes.
• Improve consistency and repeatability: Patlytics can ensure "perfect repeatability" through the use of shared custom templates that adhere to an organization’s specific standards.
• Make faster, better-informed product launch decisions: The system allows teams to pinpoint any risk for product launch by screening hundreds of patents simultaneously. These insights enable organizations to identify potential design-arounds or re-designs before incurring significant commercialization costs.

Conclusion

Freedom to Operate (FTO) analysis is a critical safeguard for innovation, but it no longer requires the prohibitive costs or slow turnaround times of traditional manual workflows. Patlytics offers a modern, AI-native end-to-end platform that transforms how teams manage launch risks by automating the identification and analysis of potentially blocking patents. By utilizing element-by-element claim mapping and color-coded confidence indicators, the platform provides immediate visibility into overlaps between product features and patent claims across major global jurisdictions, including the U.S., Europe, China, Japan, Korea, and WIPO.

The true power of Patlytics lies in its integration within the broader patent lifecycle; practitioners can now run FTO clearance analyses directly from a patent draft or invention disclosure, catching risks before significant R&D or commercialization costs are incurred.

If your organization is seeking a faster, secure way to manage FTO risk while optimizing costs or outside counsel engagement, Patlytics provides the speed and accuracy your IP strategy demands. Request a demo today or check out our other blogs on SEP analysis or prior art search.