Our attorneys have extensive experience in providing patent opinions in the chemical, biotechnological, and the pharmaceutical arts. We have prepared patentability opinions, freedom to operate or clearance opinions, validity opinions, invalidity opinions, infringement and non-infringement opinions for a wide variety of clients. We take pride in comprehensive analysis of your patent, application, or practice and any prior, contemporary or new technology or art and utilize our experience in intellectual property law to provide clear and definitive opinions.

Patentability Opinions

As part of our patent drafting practice, we can perform a patentability search (patentability study) and provide you with the resulting patentability opinion based on our extensive research into prior art. We give you valuable insight into whether the innovation is patentable, as well as the likely scope of that patent. The opinion and advice may help you to decide if it is worthwhile to proceed with the patent application. If you decide to proceed, the knowledge of existing technology and/or similar inventions is helpful in the preparation, filing, and prosecution of a strong patent application.

Validity Opinions

Our litigation and licensing clients sometimes engage us to provide validity opinions. These opinions strive to accurately predict legal outcomes. In rendering this opinion, we work closely with our clients to disclose any assumptions made in reaching the opinion so that the client is well apprised of the weight of the opinion and put in the best position to make informed decisions regarding the patent and their business objective.

Patent validity opinions are required when a new product or process may possibly infringe on a third party’s patent and when defending a patent against an infringer.
Our attorneys, armed with the applicable statutes and case law, have the knowledge and experience to provide clients with a clear and definitive opinion that is well-grounded in both fact and law.

Freedom-To-Operate Opinions

Our clients also seek our opinion regarding whether their product or process would infringe the valid and enforceable IP rights or claims of a third party or otherwise advice on identifying barriers to their commercial endeavors. In this case, we render freedom-to-operate opinion or FTO, also known as freedom-to-practice (FTP), clearance, infringement, non-infringement, and right-to-use opinion.

In carrying out this task, we seek to identify the IP environment and new information that could affect our client’s business plans. We counsel them on how this information can be used to develop their strategic options for handling proprietary science embedded in the product. This can be an effective management tool for assessing and managing certain types of risks.