You're about to launch. Whose patent are you standing on?
mar:val screens who can block you — claim by claim against your product features, with design-arounds and a straight answer about where the search stops.
Why "not rated" sits above "low".
Click down the list. It is ordered high, medium, not rated, low — deliberately against severity: a claim whose legal status was never checked against a register is an open question, not a cleared one. That is why the third row has no expiry and no decisive element, and why the fourth earned its "low" with a supported no.
A list of four patent holders that could block the product under review, ordered high, medium, not rated, low, each with its earliest relevant expiry. For the selected holder the claim element chart of the decisive claim is shown: per limitation the product features involved and whether the product practises it, plus the classification, the deal action and the design-around.
Ordered high, medium, not rated, low — "not rated" sits above "low" on purpose.
Screening only, not a legal opinion. Have counsel review anything you act on.
What the screen delivers
A claim element chart
Every claim limitation on its own, mapped to the product features it rests on. A classification without an element chart cannot be checked by anyone.
Practice, not plausibility
Per limitation: yes, no, maybe, unknown. A "yes" is meant to rest on evidence from the product itself, and "maybe" or "unknown" count as unresolved risk — never as its absence.
Four of the five classifications don't mean "blocked"
Claim may read on the product, close call unresolved, element not present, out of scope, insufficient evidence. The difference between them is the actual finding.
"Not rated" is an answer
If the legal status was not checked against a register, the finding is stored as not rated — whatever the analysis proposed. The code enforces that, not a guideline.
A design-around is mandatory
At least one for every high and medium finding — with its engineering and commercial trade-off, a verifiable requirement, a re-review trigger, and a note on what new exposure it creates.
Who can block you
Per owner: how many high and how many medium findings, the earliest relevant expiry and the jurisdictions involved — collapsed onto one row.
An action per finding
Take a licence, acquire the holder, design around it, monitor, challenge validity, or no action. Plus a ranked action list in which "legal review" is one of the entries.
Legal status with an as-of date
Per claim: verified or not, with its source and date. The screen reports for how many of the analysed claims the status was actually verified; anything older than six months is flagged for re-verification.
Complete or partial screen
The status is derived from the stored rows rather than asked of the model — with a "what is missing" list whenever a step of the method did not run.
Why the screen names its own limits
The most dangerous failure in an FTO search is not a missed patent. It is an unverified finding that passes as harmless. Here that is not discouraged, it is blocked.
See the data behind mar:val- An unverified legal status or insufficient evidence forces "not rated" — the rating is overridden and the override is reported back.
- "Low" is reserved for a well-supported gap with a verified legal status — a "low" proposed on an unverified status is overridden to "not rated".
- "Not rated" sorts above "low": an open question is not a cleared one.
- The scope is stated — the jurisdictions actually screened and the activities covered. An empty scope is refused; a screen is never assumed to be worldwide.
- Complete against partial is derived from the data, with the gaps listed explicitly.
What you are probably asking now
No, and the product says so on every finding: screening only, not a legal opinion. It shows who could block you, how badly and until when — and where the search stops. "Legal review" is one of the actions it proposes itself.
The other five situations
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