Fto Triage

/fto-triage

This is not a freedom-to-operate opinion. A formal FTO opinion requires a comprehensive search, full claim construction, and element-by-element infringement analysis by registered patent counsel. Patent infringement is strict liability; willful infringement triples damages. A "no obvious blocking patents" result from this skill means the triage didn't find one — it does not mean the product is clear.

Instructions

1. Read ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/ip-legal/CLAUDE.md. If it contains [PLACEHOLDER], stop and direct to /ip-legal:cold-start-interview.
2. Follow the workflow below.
3. Run intake (product/process, technical detail, jurisdictions, known patents, timing).
4. Run a preliminary patent search if a connector is available (Solve Intelligence Patents, or other patent-research MCP). Otherwise say so in the output and proceed with the patents the user has supplied.
5. For the 2–5 most plausible patents, build a claim-chart first pass against each independent claim — element by element. Literal read first; flag doctrine-of-equivalents separately; flag indirect / divided infringement.
6. List open questions a real FTO study would resolve (enforceability, prosecution history, IPR outcomes, license availability, enforcement history of the assignee).
7. Write the triage memo to the matter folder or practice outputs folder. Apply the work-product header per role.
8. End with recommended next steps, a willfulness note (knowledge of specific patents factors into willfulness if the company proceeds without further counsel review), and the non-lawyer gate if the role is non-lawyer.

This skill never concludes that a product is clear to launch. If uncertain, flag — patent counsel decides.

Examples

/ip-legal:fto-triage "an on-device speech recognition model for consumer wearables, US launch first"

/ip-legal:fto-triage

THIS IS NOT A FREEDOM-TO-OPERATE OPINION

The loudest guardrail in the plugin. Say this at the top of every output. Do not drop it. Do not soften it. Do not let the reader skim past it.

This is not a freedom-to-operate opinion. An FTO opinion is a professional legal judgment, usually by registered patent counsel, based on a comprehensive search, full claim construction, and an element-by-element infringement analysis against each claim of each relevant patent. This triage is a structured first look at what might be out there. A "no obvious blocking patents" result means the triage didn't find one — it does not mean the product is clear. Patent infringement is strict liability; willful infringement (which can follow from knowing about a patent and proceeding anyway) triples damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284. The decision to launch, make, use, sell, or import is a business decision informed by a formal FTO study and counsel's judgment — not by this triage. A registered patent attorney or agent evaluates before anyone relies on this for a product decision.

Under-flagging a blocking patent is a one-way door — a product launched, a deposition a year later, treble damages on the table. Over-flagging is a two-way door — the attorney narrows the list in a read-through. Stay on the two-way door side. Always.

A note on willfulness

Reading this triage is reading something about patents. Reading something about patents can, in some circumstances, factor into a willfulness analysis down the road. This is one reason the output is marked as privileged when a lawyer is using it, and why the non-lawyer output is framed as research to take to counsel. Do not discuss specific patents surfaced by this triage outside privileged channels.

Matter context

Matter context. Check ## Matter workspaces in the practice-level CLAUDE.md. If Enabled is ✗ (the default for in-house users), skip the rest of this paragraph — skills use practice-level context and the matter machinery is invisible. If enabled and there is no active matter, ask: "Which matter is this for? Run /ip-legal:matter-workspace switch <slug> or say practice-level." Load the active matter's matter.md for matter-specific context and overrides. Write outputs to the matter folder at ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/ip-legal/matters/<matter-slug>/. Never read another matter's files unless Cross-matter context is on.

Patent FTO matters are particularly common candidates for clean-team or heightened confidentiality at matter-open. Respect the matter's confidentiality marking from matter.md.

Load the practice profile first

Before running triage, read ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/ip-legal/CLAUDE.md. Pull:

• Role from ## Who's using this (lawyer vs. non-lawyer changes the work-product header and the non-lawyer gate below).
• Registered in and enforce where from ## IP practice profile and ## Enforcement posture (useful for defensive-portfolio cross-check and for jurisdiction defaults).
• Patent OC from ## IP practice profile → Outside counsel roster for the routing step.
• Integrations from ## Available integrations — specifically Solve Intelligence, or any patent-research MCP. Determines what searches are available.
• Decision posture from ## Decision posture on subjective legal calls — this skill never concludes "does not infringe."

If ~/.claude/plugins/config/claude-for-legal/ip-legal/CLAUDE.md contains [PLACEHOLDER] or [Your Company Name], surface this bounce:

I notice you haven't configured your practice profile yet — that's how I tailor posture, jurisdictions, and approval chain to your practice.

Two choices:

• Run /ip-legal:cold-start-interview (2 minutes) to configure your profile, then I'll run this tailored to YOUR practice.
• Say "provisional" and I'll run this against generic defaults — US jurisdiction, middle risk appetite, lawyer role, no playbook — and tag every output [PROVISIONAL — configure your profile for tailored output] so you can see what I do before committing.

Provisional mode

If the user says "provisional," run the FTO triage normally using these generic defaults: middle risk appetite, lawyer role, US jurisdiction, no playbook (do the full analysis rather than matching against a position list). Tag the reviewer note and every finding block with [PROVISIONAL]. At the end of the output, append:

"That was a generic run against default assumptions. Run /ip-legal:cold-start-interview to get output calibrated to YOUR practice — your playbook, your jurisdiction, your risk appetite. 2 minutes."

Intake

Ask in a single batch:

I'll run an FTO triage. A few questions first:

1. Product, process, or feature. What's being made, used, offered for sale, sold, or imported? Describe it plainly — the technical essence, not the marketing pitch.
2. Technical detail. Any architectural diagrams, claim-relevant specs, a public product page, or a spec document you can share? (The more detail, the more real the triage.)
3. Jurisdictions. Where will it be made, used, sold, offered for sale, imported? (Each is a separate infringing act under 35 U.S.C. § 271. I'll default to the US if you don't specify.)
4. Known patents. Are there patents already on your radar — a competitor's portfolio, a known SEP pool, an NPE letter, something an engineer mentioned?
5. Timing. How close is this to launch? If it's months out, the triage is early and design-around is on the table. If it's already shipping, we're in cover-our-downside mode.

Wait for the answer. If the description is vague ("an AI agent," "a database"), push once:

Give me the technical essence — what does the thing do, how does it do it, and what's the piece you think might be novel? Patent claims live at that level.

Scope — utility patents only

This skill analyzes utility patents. If a patent on the radar has a D, RE, or PP prefix, flag it and route out, do not claim-chart it:

• D (design patent). Different test entirely — ordinary observer under Egyptian Goddess, Inc. v. Swisa, Inc., 543 F.3d 665 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc), overall ornamental appearance, no claim chart. Route to the infringement-triage design patent branch and to design patent counsel. Design patents are not analyzed in this FTO triage — a design-patent overlap must be flagged as a separate workstream.
• RE (reissue). Treat as a utility patent with added §252 intervening- rights and recapture-rule flags.
• PP (plant patent). Route to plant-patent counsel; out of scope.

Also cross-flag trade dress: if the product's appearance is the risk, the same facts may be a §43(a) product-configuration claim that requires secondary meaning (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara Bros., Inc., 529 U.S. 205 (2000)) and non-functionality (TrafFix Devices, Inc. v. Marketing Displays, Inc., 532 U.S. 23 (2001)). Flag as a parallel track.

Search

What the user has connected

Read ## Available integrations:

• Solve Intelligence connected: run a preliminary search across the technical description. Note the date of the search, the query used, the jurisdictions covered, and any date window (current in-force patents; recent published applications).
• Patent-research MCP (Google Patents Public Datasets, PatSnap export): available: use it.
• None of the above: explicitly say so. Do not infer patents from model knowledge and present them as search results.

Fallback when no patent database is connected

Write this exact statement in the output:

No patent database search was run. This triage did not hit Solve Intelligence Patents, USPTO Patents Full-Text, EPO Espacenet, Google Patents, PatSnap, or any other patent corpus. A structured search across the jurisdictions in scope is required before relying on this triage for any launch decision. The analysis below is limited to patents and applications the user has named or that come up in the conversation.

Then proceed. The claim-chart-first-pass work below is still valuable — just label the scope honestly.

Supplementary signals (not a substitute)

If available and the user allows, sweep for non-patent signals that flag a patent concern:

• Competitor patent filings around the product area.
• Known NPE targeting of the technology class (e.g., network-coding NPEs in Eastern District of Texas / Delaware / Western District of Texas).
• Standards-essential declarations (IEEE, ETSI, 3GPP) if the product touches a relevant standard.
• Reported litigation in the technology space (CourtListener / RECAP, Unified Patents, Lex Machina).

Each signal is a reason to look harder, not a patent hit. Mark them as signals in the output, not as identified patents.

For each relevant patent found or supplied

Capture:

• Patent number (with application number if different) and jurisdiction
• Title
• Assignee and inventors
• Priority date and issue date
• Expiration date (per USPTO PAIR / PatentCenter / foreign equivalent — check term adjustments, term extensions, and terminal disclaimers)
• Maintenance fee status / in-force status — if a US patent has failed a 3.5/7.5/11.5-year maintenance fee, it's expired and not a bar
• Claim count — independent and dependent
• Independent claims as issued (and any relevant amended claims from post-grant proceedings)
• Related proceedings — IPRs, PGRs, reexaminations, litigation history, PTAB outcomes
• File wrapper highlights — prosecution disclaimers, amendments that narrowed the claims, statements about scope

Do not supplement silently. If a search surfaces a patent, attribute the result. If the user mentioned a patent, say that. Never invent a patent number, never "fill in" a claim element the file doesn't support, never imagine an expiration date. If maintenance fee status isn't available, write "maintenance fee status not verified from search result — confirm in PAIR before relying on in-force status."