Having a patent is not freedom to operate
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA
President and CEO, Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, another lousy golfer, terrible cook
One of the first hurdles you need to overcome if you are trying to get a device to market is determining whether it is patentable and that you have freedom to operate. The two are not the same and are sometimes confused. No, in this instance, freedom to operate does not mean you have OR block time on Tuesday mornings,
A patent is?the exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to?manufacture, use, or sell an invention for a certain number of years.
"Freedom to operate", abbreviated "FTO", is usually used to mean determining whether a particular action, such as testing or commercialising a product, can be done without infringing valid intellectual property rights of others.
In other words, having a patent prevents others from using your idea but it does not give you license to use someone else's patented idea.
Whether you do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you, there are fundamental differences between?a patent search and infringement clearance.
There are ways for you to do a basic patent search by using USPTO,gov or Google patents. Infringement clearance is more complicated. In either instance, when you get past initial stages, you should consult an IP professional before taking the next steps.
Arlen Meyers,MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs
This work is licensed under a?Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.