Opinion & Strategic Counseling

Obtaining a patent not only costs a significant amount of filing and attorney fees (up to tens of thousands of dollars), but also takes a long time (a few to several years). Thus it would often make sense for a company to investigate whether its invention would be patentable before deciding to file a patent application. We can provide opinions as to whether your specific invention would be patentable. We review patent and non-patent literatures in various languages including English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean to best assist you to decide whether filing a patent application for a specific invention is a good business decision.   

At any stage of your company’s operation (such as planning R&D, testing, and manufacturing), it is strategically important to investigate whether such operation can be done without infringing valid intellectual property rights of others in a particular country. We search and review granted patent, trademarks, and other IP rights in that country to help you to make sure that your company has freedom to operate and thus to mitigate the risk of infringement litigation.  

Your company will occasionally find it necessary to determine whether a granted patent of yours or others is valid and enforceable. One of such an occasion is where your company is sued for infringement and invalidating the opponent’s patent is your first line of defense. Another occasion is where you are contemplating asserting, licensing, buying, or selling patent rights and want to know whether your patent is valid and enforceable. We can provide opinion as to whether a particular patent is valid and enforceable by reviewing prior art documents in various languages.