John Bowler Joins Solve Intelligence

R&D teams use patent landscape analysis to locate uncharted areas of a technology field, assess freedom-to-operate (FTO), and focus development resources on the areas of highest commercial value and broadest potential claim coverage.

Key takeaways

• A patent landscape search locates whitespace; a novelty search locates prior art blockers. 
• Patent landscape outputs require contextual analysis; volume alone does not determine opportunity or density.
• Solve’s Charts tool scans millions of patents from a single file upload and leverages agentic searching, replacing manual iterative keyword & semantic search.

At IPBC Global 2026, Solve Intelligence was proud to be a sponsor of the conversations shaping the future of intellectual property. At the conference, we demonstrated how our platform amplifies end-to-end patent workflows, including licensing, litigation, and IP-backed finance.

Key takeaways

• Generic LLMs cannot perform the structured legal reasoning and claim analysis that patent licensing and litigation require.
• AI lowers the cost of analysing portfolios, from claim-to-product mappings to validity analyses, accelerating both sides of licensing negotiations.
• IP-backed finance, insurance, and M&A due diligence are growing in sophistication and volume.
• The profession faces a capacity gap that generic AI tools are not designed to close.

A freedom to operate (FTO) analysis is a claim-by-claim assessment of whether a commercial activity would infringe any third-party patents in the markets where it will take place. AI speeds it up by handling the parts that scale badly by hand: surfacing relevant patents, mapping product features against claims element by element, pulling legal status by jurisdiction, and producing a cited, structured draft for the attorney to review and refine.

Key takeaways

• FTO analysis determines whether a product infringes third-party patents.

• A valid patent on your own invention doesn’t guarantee freedom to operate.

• AI compresses the slowest stages of FTO, including search, triage, and element-by-element claim mapping, while the attorney retains the legal judgment and owns the opinion.

• Generalist AI and purpose-built patent tools share a surface format; but FTO reliability depends on integration, not interface.

An invalidity claim chart is a structured document that maps, for example, each limitation of a patent claim against prior art to show the patent should never have been granted. If you’re defending against infringement allegations, preparing an IPR petition, opposing a European patent, or advising a client on patent risk, knowing how to build one correctly is non-negotiable.

Key takeaways

• A well-built invalidity chart maps every claim limitation to prior art, element by element, with pinpoint citations to the exact column, line, page, or figure.

• When IPRs reach a final written decision, the PTAB now finds every challenged claim unpatentable around 70% of the time; and the chart is a key component of getting a petition instituted in the first place.

• Solve Intelligence’s Charts generates fully cited, limitation-by-limitation invalidity charts in minutes rather than days, flags weak limitation coverage candidly, and lets attorneys inspect the reasoning behind every mapping.