Freedom-to-Operate Screen

Use this skill when the user wants a first-pass patent screen of a supplier, partner, or planned piece of work before qualifying it: which patents and published applications does the other party hold under every name variant, and which of their claims use…

This skill is Labor as Code™ for the freedom-to-operate check in Discoverability Engineering. The know-how is a qualifier's habit of asking, before signing with a supplier or partner, which patents might sit in the way and who owns them.

The method comes from "Patents and Prior Art Are Public Evidence That Needs a Date Anyone Can Prove," which says what an analysis involves and why the claims decide it. Read it for the limits. This skill does the first pass. It does not retell Merriden's patent watch or Stallworth's onboarding question.

This skill produces a screen, never an opinion. An analysis is an opinion from a qualified professional for one country on one date. The skill lists what counsel should read. It never writes "clear," "no infringement," or "safe," and it never says a claim is or is not infringed. The patent attorney reads every listed claim and decides whether it needs an analysis.

Before running

1. The planned work, in enough detail to search. Get the technical terms, the product or process, the countries where it will be made and sold, and the date work starts.
2. The other party's names. Get the legal name and every variant from specs/ontology/relationships.yaml or the user: the DBA, former names, parent, subsidiaries, and misspellings. Names the party prints on patents can differ from any of these.
3. The approved databases. Read specs/surfaces/patent-and- literature.yaml. Note what each covers and what it leaves out. For example, a public U.S. patent search covers U.S. patents and published applications and no foreign patent databases.

Step 1: Search under every name

1. Search each database for patents and published applications under every name variant, and for inventors the user names.
2. Record for each result: number, assignee exactly as printed, filing date, issue or publication date, and legal status. Read the legal status from the database and record the date. Mark it UNKNOWN when it cannot be read; never assume in force or expired.
3. Note whether a maintenance fee lapse or an expiry is shown, and the source of that fact.

Step 2: Read the independent claims

1. For each in-force or unknown-status patent, quote each independent claim word for word.
2. List the terms from the planned work that appear in the claim, and quote the overlapping words.
3. List the terms in the claim that the planned work does not use. Do not weigh them. Counsel weighs them.
4. Do not paraphrase a claim. The claims define the rights.

Step 3: State the limits of the search

Write these lines in every screen:

1. What the search cannot see: applications not yet published, provisional applications, applications under a secrecy order, and applications filed with a request not to publish.
2. Where it looked: the databases and the countries. A patent applies in one country.
3. The date: the search date. The literature changes as applications publish and patents issue.

Step 4: Conclude

Write, in plain words with reasons:

1. The screen's result. How many patents and applications were found, how many claims use terms from the work, and which three the attorney should read first, with the reason for the order.
2. What would settle the open points: a status the database did not show, a name variant not yet searched, a country not covered.
3. What a party's own answer would add. Some primes and partners ask for a list of patents that cover the work and any patent assertion received. Prepare the supplier's answer from its Prior Art Records and its patent watch, marked as a draft for the attorney.

Where a search returned nothing, say what was searched and what it could not see. A search that finds nothing is not a finding that nothing exists.

What this skill does not do

• It does not give an opinion on infringement or validity.
• It does not contact the other party or send anything outside the company.
• It does not treat a government-use clause as a reason to skip the screen. Counsel reads the clause in the actual contract.

Used in Acquired Alpha

A buyer that plans to depend on a supplier's software can screen the supplier first. In Acquired Alpha the screen is one of the inspection-rung checks (the buyer looks at what the seller holds and what it may infringe) and its result goes on the supplier's Claim Card. The skill's own conclusion does not change.