FTO: Revealing the Hidden Risks

We will be hosting this workshop at CodeBase's Edinburgh Hub from 14:30 on Tuesday, May 28th. The session will be informal to promote discussion and interaction and we will be happy to answer all your questions.

There is a long-held misconception that conducting a freedom to operate (FTO) exercise generates a ‘get out of J*il 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 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.

For investors we will explain the approach to FTO you should reasonably expect to deploy (and how a lack of formal FTO shouldn’t be considered a weakness). We will also discuss how to factor the scope of any necessary FTO against the value of the investment.

We’ll finish by looking at what FTO is needed to make a more informed decision for investors. 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’.

Please note, this event is for investors only.

Host or Publisher Potter Clarkson LLP