Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are still widely used by lawyers and their firms for administrative operations and practice groups, including in patent review. But two brothers hope to weaken that grip with their new patent clearance management software Clearstone FTO. Today, brothers and ClearstoneIP co-founders Gabe and Jesse Sukman announced the public launch of their Clearstone FTO tool.

The impetus behind the software was the co-founders’ 20 years practicing patent law and noticing that the freedom-to-operate (FTO) process to determine if a proposed product would infringe another patent’s IP rights was rife with inefficiencies. ”We saw a need to make things better,” said ClearstoneIP CEO Gabe Sukman.