Freedom-to-Operate in India: 7 Steps from InPASS to Litigation-History Check

How-To · Patents · Last verified October 2026

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

A product can be ready to launch and still be blocked by a patent you never saw. A freedom-to-operate (FTO) search is how you find that patent before a court notice does. This guide gives a 7-step FTO workflow for India, from the free InPASS database to a check of how past patent suits actually ended. It was last verified in October 2026.

01Why freedom-to-operate is hard in India

The risk in FTO is not the patents you can find easily. It is the ones you did not think to look for. In India, three things make that real.

A patent is not one thing

Infringement is decided claim by claim, not by title or abstract. A patent that sounds unrelated can have one broad claim that reads on your product. A patent that sounds identical can have narrow claims that do not.

Status keeps changing

A patent can be pending, granted, opposed, revoked, ceased for non-payment of renewal fees, or restored. A search that ignores legal status will flag dead patents and miss live ones.

The paper record is only half the story

A granted patent tells you what the owner holds. It does not tell you whether the owner enforces it, or whether the patent survived when it was attacked. That second half sits in court records.

An FTO search answers one question: can we sell this product in India without a valid, in-force patent claim covering it. Everything else is detail.

02What an FTO is and is not

An FTO is an assessment of whether making, using, selling or importing your product in a country risks infringing in-force patents there. It looks at one product and one territory at a time.

• It is not a patentability search. A patentability (novelty) search asks whether your idea is new. An FTO asks whether you may sell it.
• It is not an invalidity search. Invalidity work looks for prior art to attack one specific patent. You may do it later, if the FTO finds a blocker.
• It is country-specific. An Indian patent only gives rights in India. A clear result in India says nothing about the US or Europe.

Under the Patents Act, 1970, the patentee has exclusive rights to stop others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the patented product or process in India (section 48). That is the right your FTO is testing against.

03The 7-step FTO workflow

Follow these seven steps in order. Keep a simple log of every query, date and result, so the work can be repeated and defended later.

Step 1. Define the product and the territory

Write down exactly what you will make or sell in India: features, materials, process, and the components you will import. List the date you plan to launch. An FTO on a vague product gives a vague answer.

Step 2. Break the product into features

List each technical feature as a short line. Claims are matched against features, so this list becomes the left side of your claim chart in step 5.

Step 3. Search InPASS, the free IP India database

InPASS is the Indian Patent Advanced Search System run by IP India. It is free and needs no registration. It lets you search published applications and granted patents by title, abstract, applicant, inventor, classification and more. Search each feature from step 2 using synonyms, and also search by classification code and by names of likely competitors.

InPASS covers Indian records only. It does not replace a search of foreign records or non-patent literature, and it is not an FTO opinion by itself.

Step 4. Filter by legal status and dates

For every hit, check the status. Keep only patents that are granted and in force, plus pending applications that could still be granted with claims that cover you. Remove patents that have lapsed for non-payment of renewal fees, were revoked, or expired. Note the filing date, because a patent normally runs for 20 years from filing. Watch the pending ones: a pending application can still be granted later.

Step 5. Build a claim chart

For each surviving patent, read the independent claims first. Put the claim elements in one column and your product features in the next. Mark each element as present, absent or unclear. If even one element of a claim is truly missing from your product, that claim is generally not infringed literally. Where it is unclear, flag it for an attorney.

Also read the granted claims, not the original filing. Claims often change during examination, and the final text is what counts.

Step 6. Test each risky patent for validity

A patent that covers you may still be weak. Under section 64 of the Patents Act, a patent can be revoked on listed grounds, and in an infringement suit the defendant can bring a counter-claim for revocation. Section 107 lets a defendant use those same grounds as a defence. A court can also hear such a counter-claim only in a High Court, not a lower court (section 104).

Look for earlier publications, earlier Indian filings, and any pre-grant or post-grant opposition history on the patent. If the patent looks weak, note the best prior art. That can become your defence or a revocation petition later.

Step 7. Check the litigation history

Now look outside the registry. Search court records for the patentee and for each risky patent. Ask four things. Has this owner sued before, and in which court? Was this exact patent asserted? Did the defendant counter-claim for revocation, and what happened? Were there interim injunctions, and were they granted or refused?

An owner who regularly sues is a different risk from one who never has. A patent that was asserted and then revoked is a different risk from one that survived. Court orders and judgments are public, and you can search them on sources such as the court websites and Indian Kanoon.

For one specific type of owner, see our report on university patent lapses in India, where many patents stop being in force because renewal fees are not paid.

04Reading the result

After step 7, put each patent into one of three groups.

A Blocker is not the end. Most blockers are solved by a design change or a licence. If the owner has a record of suing and winning, the commercial pressure to settle is higher, so you should know that early. For a risk check on a counterparty or a lender-side view, see how teams use a litigation search API for the same kind of litigation-history check.

05Mistakes to avoid

• Searching titles only. Claims decide infringement. Read them.
• Ignoring pending applications. They can be granted after you launch.
• Treating one search as final. Repeat the search before launch and at each major design change.
• Skipping the court check. The registry does not show whether a patent has been tested.
• Relying on a tool alone. A tool finds records. A patent attorney gives the opinion.

Long court orders are a time sink in step 7. A summariser helps you reach the holding fast. See our list of the best AI court order summarisers in India.

06Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

Step 7, the litigation-history check, is where Claw fits. It tracks cases, orders and hearings across 9,102 courts, benches and forums, holds 30 crore+ judgments, covers Supreme Court records from 1950 and High Court records from 1990, and returns results in under 5 seconds, so you can see whether an owner has sued before and whether a patent survived a revocation counter-claim. Claw does not use customer documents to train AI models.

Create a FREE Claw account to run the litigation-history check on a patentee or a blocking patent, and to run case search across Indian courts.

07Sources and further reading

Check every statute section and rule against the primary source before relying on it:

• IP India (InPASS and patent records): ipindia.gov.in
• India Code (Patents Act, 1970): indiacode.nic.in
• WIPO PATENTSCOPE (international records): patentscope.wipo.int
• Delhi High Court (IP Division orders and rules): delhihighcourt.nic.in
• Indian Kanoon (public judgments): indiankanoon.org
• Claw: clawlaw.in

Last verified October 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.

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