Are you sure your FTO review is covering all the bases? 

Many companies don’t consider that patent risks could come from completely unrelated industries. But today, they’re just as likely to face litigation from these unexpected industries as from their own. 

Just ask Toyota.

A few years ago Broadcom sued Toyota over patents that seemed to cover everything from video data processing to digital media decoding systems. They probably didn’t expect a patent dispute with a telecom giant like Broadcom.

This happened either because: like most automotive companies, Toyota didn’t consider themselves at risk from telecom or electronics patents and limited their FTO analysis to patents directly related to their core business.

Or: when Toyota conducted their FTO review, they likely focused on hardware patents, such as FM chips and video codecs, assuming that their GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) suppliers had the software side covered. 

That’s a classic blind spot – It’s easy to locate the elements in hardware based patents but gets trickier to locate the overlapping claims where data flows need to be interpreted. 

This type of oversight can have significant consequences. 

For Toyota, it meant massive delays in their navigation system deployment, impacting production timelines and leading to millions of dollars in rework costs. 

And this happens more often than you might think.

The blind spot: Where do competitors’ patent claims intersect with your system-level data flows and functions? 

My team has helped many organizations analyze patent claims by going beyond just patent codes or keywords. We focus on mapping functional claim language to the system architecture, data pipelines, filtering logic, and algorithmic layers. This approach has been instrumental in identifying potential risks, where even a single method claim could disrupt the entire integration process.

If you’re reviewing a new FTO right now, I’d be happy to help stress-test it and share some initial insights. Would you like to give it a try?

If yes, you can get in touch with my team here: https://www.greyb.com/become-a-client