FTO Checker for patent attorneys and IP professionals

Stop spending unbillable hours on background research. FTO Checker delivers a structured IP and market landscape report — patents, competitors, funding signals, regulatory context, and scientific trends — to you and your client before the first meeting.

Preliminary screening is done, initial assessment has substance... Client intake starts where it should: on strategy.

The problem with client intake

Every new client engagement starts the same way. Before you can do what you're trained to do — interpret claims, assess infringement risk, build IP strategy — you need context. Not just the patent landscape, but everything around it.

Who are the key players in this space? Is the market growing or consolidating? Who's funding what? What does the regulatory environment look like? Are there scientific publications signalling where the technology is heading?

None of this is in patent databases. Yet every initial client meeting burns hours on exactly these questions — hours spent piecing together a picture the client can't articulate and that you can't invoice.

The cost of working in the dark

At $300–$500 per hour, the economics are brutal. A two-hour discovery meeting that could have been a focused 30-minute review. A dossier that takes three meetings to frame because the client showed up with nothing but a one-paragraph description and high expectations. A promising lead that turns out to have no viable market — discovered too late, after you've already invested significant unbillable time.

The pattern repeats across every client intake:

Hours spent on preliminary research that isn't billable
First meetings that are exploratory instead of productive
No structured way to assess whether a dossier justifies a full engagement before committing your time
Market context — competitors, funding, regulation — that you're expected to discuss but have no efficient way to gather

Your IP expertise is what clients pay for. But the hours you spend building context before they've signed never make it onto an invoice.

What changes with FTO Checker

Your client describes their invention. Ninety seconds later, you both receive a structured brief covering:

Patent landscape: Relevant patents ranked by claim alignment, strategic weight, and jurisdictional coverage — with AI-generated justifications you can review critically
Competitive landscape: Key players mapped against patent positions and market activity — context you'd otherwise spend hours assembling from scattered sources
Funding and deals: Recent investment rounds, acquisitions, and partnerships — signals that reveal where the market sees value and risk
Scientific publications: 240M+ research papers analyzed to detect emerging technologies and white spaces — often 12 to 24 months before they appear in patent filings
Regulatory environment: Regulatory context relevant to commercialization — the kind of information clients always ask about and you shouldn't have to research
SWOT analysis: A structured synthesis your client can understand without legal training

You receive the report before the first meeting. Your client does too. The conversation starts on substance, not basic discovery.

How it works in practice

You embed a simple form on your website — branded with your firm's identity. When a prospective client fills it in, FTO Checker generates the report automatically. Both you and the client receive it by email.

Before you've opened your calendar, you already know whether the dossier has substance. You know what the patent landscape looks like, who the competitors are, and whether the market context supports a viable engagement. The client arrives having read their own report — with specific questions instead of vague expectations.

Your first billable hour starts where it should: on expert analysis, not background research.

What your clients see

From your client's perspective, the experience is seamless. They visit your website, describe their invention, and receive a professional report — delivered by your firm, in your branding. They don't need to know how it's generated. They see a firm that provides structured intelligence as part of its service, not one that asks them to explain everything from scratch in a first meeting.

Here's what a typical report looks like:

Confidentiality

Client descriptions are never stored, reused, or shared beyond generating the report. FTO Checker does not train AI models on user input. Data is automatically deleted after delivery.

FTO Checker is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, uses European infrastructure providers, and is fully GDPR-compliant with ISO/IEC 27001-certified hosting. The same standards your clients expect from you.

Get started

Integration takes less than a day. We provide the embedded form, configure your branding, and handle the report delivery. You focus on what you do best.

For patent attorneys and IP professionals