About FTO Checker

In 2025, we were deeptech entrepreneurs with a decade of experience navigating the patent system. We'd been through the filing process multiple times — each time facing the same fundamental challenge. The real pain didn't start when you submitted your application and waited months for responses. It started earlier, during the preparation phase, when you needed to answer a deceptively simple question: can we move forward with this idea?

Traditional Freedom-to-Operate analysis could answer that question, but it required weeks of work and budgets starting at $10,000. The system worked if you had the time and money, but for most innovators at the idea stage, these resources simply weren't available when they needed them most.

We kept asking ourselves: why does it take so long and cost so much to answer what is fundamentally a data question? Patent analysis does require legal expertise at certain stages — especially when you're interpreting nuances or building defense strategies. But at the beginning, when you're simply trying to understand if your innovation path is blocked, the process should be more straightforward.

Recent developments in AI and language processing, combined with the growing availability of patent data through comprehensive APIs, suggested a different approach was possible. We saw an opportunity to build something that could handle the language-intensive, process-heavy aspects of initial patent screening — creating a tool specifically designed for non-specialists who needed quick strategic insight rather than exhaustive legal analysis.

That's how FTO Checker started: as a patent search tool that was fast, affordable, and simple enough for entrepreneurs to use without patent expertise.

Users appreciated what we'd built. But within months, we realized they were asking for something different.

The question we'd missed

Three months into launching, a pattern emerged in user feedback that we hadn't anticipated. An inventor would receive their patent landscape report and immediately ask: "Okay, but can I actually move forward with this?" A business angel reviewing the analysis would say: "This shows me what patents exist, but I still don't know if this space is commercially viable." An incubator manager told us plainly: "My startups don't need lists of patent numbers. They need to understand if their idea has real potential."

We'd successfully made patent landscape analysis faster and more affordable, solving the accessibility problem we'd set out to address. But we'd misunderstood what "accessibility" meant to our users. They didn't just need access to patent data — they needed strategic intelligence that could inform early-stage decisions about whether to commit time, capital, and resources to an innovation.

The uncomfortable reality

The more we talked to users, the clearer a fundamental problem became. The innovation ecosystem operates backwards. Most startups that eventually fail due to IP conflicts never needed comprehensive legal due diligence from day one. What they needed was basic strategic screening before they quit their jobs, before they raised capital, before they spent months building prototypes. Similarly, most early-stage investors who skip IP screening aren't being reckless — they're being rational. When you're writing $50,000 seed checks and evaluating dozens of opportunities annually, spending $10,000 per deal on Freedom-to-Operate reports simply doesn't make economic sense.

The result is a gap in the market: the people who most need IP intelligence can't afford it when they need it. And making patent searches faster or cheaper doesn't really solve this problem, because the actual question isn't "what patents exist in this space?" The question that determines whether someone moves forward is more complex: "Given everything — the patent landscape, research trends, market dynamics, competitive positioning — should I invest my resources in this direction?"

The evolution

We made a deliberate choice to stop thinking of ourselves as a patent search tool and start building strategic intelligence infrastructure. Rather than adding features for their own sake, we asked what information someone actually needs to make an informed go/no-go decision at the idea stage.

Understanding the patent landscape is essential, certainly. But strategic decision-making requires additional context. You need to know whether the research community is actively publishing in this area — which signals either that the technology is still maturing or that the fundamental challenges are harder than they appear. You need to understand the market narrative: is anyone discussing this approach, and if so, what are they saying? Funding patterns reveal what insiders believe about the future of a technology space. And you need to see who the serious players are and where they're focusing their efforts, because competitive dynamics fundamentally shape what's strategically viable.

We realized that strategic due diligence isn't about accessing a single data source more efficiently. It's about synthesizing multiple signals to provide clarity on a complex question. That understanding transformed what we were building. We evolved from being a faster, more affordable patent search into becoming a strategic IP intelligence platform designed specifically for early-stage decision-making.

Today, when business angels use FTO Checker to screen projects before providing funding, they're not simply checking for patent conflicts. They're evaluating strategic viability across multiple dimensions. When business angels use our reports during deal screening, they're not just avoiding legal risk — they're assessing market positioning and competitive dynamics. When individual inventors validate their ideas with our app, they're not conducting patent searches in the traditional sense. They're answering the fundamental question: is this innovation path viable given everything we can know about the landscape?

Why this matters

Every year, countless promising innovations fail not because the technology wasn't sound or the market wasn't real, but because someone didn't discover a patent thicket blocking their commercialization path until it was too late to pivot. Every year, investors deploy capital into companies that will eventually hit IP walls that were predictable and avoidable. Every year, entrepreneurs leave secure jobs and invest their savings into building products they ultimately can't bring to market.

This doesn't happen because the information needed to avoid these outcomes doesn't exist. It happens because accessing that information traditionally requires five-figure budgets and week-long timelines. By the time most innovators can afford comprehensive due diligence, they've already made the critical decisions. They've already committed their resources. The information arrives too late to influence the choice that mattered most: whether to start down this path in the first place.

We believe strategic IP intelligence should be accessible at the idea stage — when it actually shapes decisions rather than just validating choices already made. The decision to move forward with an innovation shouldn't be made in the dark simply because traditional analysis tools are priced and structured for later-stage companies with established budgets.

The mission

We're not trying to disrupt patent law or replace legal due diligence. Legal expertise remains essential for comprehensive Freedom-to-Operate analysis, portfolio strategy, and litigation risk management. What we're doing is democratizing a specific decision: the early-stage go/no-go choice that every innovator, investor, and innovation support organization faces.

That decision — should I move forward with this innovation? — determines whether the next year of someone's professional life is spent building something with real potential or pursuing an idea that was doomed from the start. It determines whether investor capital creates value or hits walls that diligent screening would have revealed. It determines whether an incubator's limited resources flow to projects with genuine strategic viability.

This decision should be informed by the best available intelligence. It should happen quickly, without weeks of waiting. And it should be economically accessible to the people making it — not just well-funded corporations in later stages of development. The decision should be made before commitments are finalized, before significant capital is deployed, before teams are hired and timelines are set.

That's what we're building. That's what we'll continue building. Because we believe every innovator deserves to understand their strategic position before making the decisions that will define the next chapter of their work.