With millions of active patents worldwide, the hard part isn't finding patents — it's deciding which ones matter. A keyword match doesn't mean legal risk, and a patent with no obvious link to your technology can still be a threat. The difference between useful intelligence and noise comes down to how relevance is assessed.
This page explains how FTO Checker evaluates and ranks patents — and why our approach goes beyond simple keyword matching.
The challenge of patent relevance
Most patent search tools return long lists ranked by keyword frequency or semantic similarity. This creates two problems: genuinely relevant patents get buried in noise, and superficially similar patents get flagged when they pose no real concern.
The question every decision-maker faces — whether you're an inventor, a founder, or an investor — is the same:
Which patents deserve closer attention, and which can you safely set aside?
How FTO Checker assesses patent relevance
FTO Checker uses a structured, multi-dimensional scoring framework. Rather than relying on a single similarity metric, each patent is evaluated across several independent dimensions. Here's what we look at.
1. Discovery confidence
FTO Checker doesn't run a single search — it uses multiple independent search strategies in parallel: semantic analysis, patent classification codes, assignee-based search, and advanced keyword reformulations. Patents found by several independent methods score higher, because convergence from different angles is a strong signal of genuine relevance.
2. Technical claim alignment
We analyse how closely a patent's claims match your technology description — not just at the keyword level, but in terms of functional and structural overlap. Independent claims carry more weight than dependent claims, and the specificity of the match matters more than surface-level similarity.
3. Patent strength and influence
Not all patents carry the same weight. A patent held by a major industry player with a broad family across multiple jurisdictions represents a different level of concern than a single national filing by an individual inventor. FTO Checker factors in family size, jurisdictional coverage, and forward citations to assess a patent's strategic influence in the landscape.
4. Temporal relevance
Patent age affects how you should interpret it. Recent filings may signal emerging competitive activity. Older patents nearing expiration represent a different kind of risk — or opportunity. Our scoring reflects these strategic differences depending on whether you're assessing freedom to operate or evaluating the landscape for investment purposes.
Why this matters
By combining these dimensions, FTO Checker helps you move from a raw list of patents to a prioritised, actionable assessment. Concretely, this means you can:
- Focus legal review on the patents that genuinely matter — not the ones that merely share keywords
- Understand why each patent was flagged, through AI-generated justifications that explain the match
- Share structured findings with stakeholders — investors, legal counsel, or internal teams — with confidence
- Reduce the risk of missing critical patents that a single-method search would overlook
Transparency in our approach
While the details of our scoring models are proprietary, every FTO Checker report provides enough context for you to evaluate the results critically:
- A structured relevance score for each patent, broken down by dimension
- AI-generated explanations describing why each patent was flagged
- A full dataset export (Excel) so you can apply your own filters and analysis
We build FTO Checker in close collaboration with experienced IP professionals who test and challenge our results regularly. Their feedback directly shapes how we refine our scoring and ranking — ensuring the system reflects real-world IP practice, not just algorithmic convenience.
Beyond patents: relevance in context
Patent relevance doesn't exist in a vacuum. A patent matters more — or less — depending on who holds it, what market they operate in, and where the technology is heading.
This is why FTO Checker doesn't stop at patent analysis. Our Market Scout and IP Deep Dive reports place patent findings within a broader intelligence context — including competitive landscape, funding activity, and scientific trends — so you can assess relevance not just technically, but strategically.
