ClearstoneIP, an intellectual property (IP) technology provider with offices in the U.S. and Europe, today officially launched Clearstone FTO, a cloud-based workflow platform that digitally manages the freedom-to-operate (FTO) process for accelerated patent clearance and product development.
With dozens of corporate patent departments, R&D teams and law firms already subscribed, Clearstone FTO enables a product-centric approach to performing and managing patent infringement risk investigations.
Most IP technology on the market either manages the prosecution and maintenance lifecycle or enables searching and identifying patents. As a purpose-built workflow and collaboration tool centered around patent claim analysis, Clearstone FTO represents a new solution category for patent and R&D professionals bringing new products to market.
The backbone of Clearstone FTO is The Digital Review, a first-of-its-kind FTO framework for legal and R&D collaboration. Setting a new standard for digitally transformed FTO and patent clearance investigations, the Digital Review employs a six-stage approach to identify subject matter, conduct patent searches, review patent claims, foster collaboration with technical experts, resolve final determinations and finally report risk assessments to stakeholders. The platform intelligently extracts key patent information from various data sources to facilitate multi-level analysis capture, all while preserving attorney-client privilege through environmental controls within the platform.
ClearstoneIP was co-founded by brothers and patent attorneys Gabe and Jesse Sukman who set out to modernize a historically archaic FTO analysis process. While practicing law, they experienced first-hand the risk and inefficiencies of relying on manual methods and static spreadsheets to manage FTO investigations while helping their clients pursue innovation.
“It’s exciting to see our vision of removing barriers to innovation come to fruition,” remarked CEO Gabe Sukman, “With legal processes across the board undergoing digital transformation, FTO was ripe for modernization. By digitizing, centralizing, and managing FTO workflows, Clearstone FTO has transformed and accelerated a commercially critical process for the whole spectrum of product companies from startups to Fortune 500 and their outside counsel.”
"Clearstone FTO has become integral to managing our freedom-to-operate and clearance projects,” noted Adan Ayala, the General Patent Counsel of Stanley Black & Decker. “The intuitive design of the platform makes it easy to quickly analyze patent claims allowing our attorneys to become more productive over time.”
Other subscribers of Clearstone FTO include Roche, Cytiva, Acushnet Golf, Suez and ResMed.
Standard access to perform and collaborate in patent reviews in Clearstone FTO is free while paid premium Professional, Enterprise, and Firm accounts are available with powerful features for individuals and teams with higher-volume FTO workloads. Any registered user, free or premium, can share and work together in patent reviews with anyone else, greatly simplifying and accelerating discussions between legal and R&D.
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