I certainly don’t speak for HN, but if there’s one case to made for software patents, IMO it’s narrowly focused claims for an innovation that is highly visible on the front-end of your product, or is the defining feature of your product. The type of thing that your competitors never even thought to do until they saw you doing it, and then can cheaply copy in a weekend hackathon.
Drawing a line on a map and having it snap to a route is probably not in itself novel. There may be things that Footpath is doing that turn a “cool idea in practice which doesn’t really work” into a exciting user experience that delivers a lot of value to their customers. Perhaps Footpath has even spent a large share of their limited engineering resources refining the feature to this point. That hypothetical situation to me is exactly when you at least file the provisional.
Even if you never file the utility patent, you can claim “Patent Pending” and [US] competitors would be more likely to hold off on cloning your UX straight away, or could maybe tilt the scales toward an acquisition.
A generic “snap drawing to route” should not be patentable due to I’m sure copious prior art. The question is if there’s something unique Footpath is doing to make it work particularly well for their users (TFA hunted that there was) that breaks new ground.
Drawing a line on a map and having it snap to a route is probably not in itself novel. There may be things that Footpath is doing that turn a “cool idea in practice which doesn’t really work” into a exciting user experience that delivers a lot of value to their customers. Perhaps Footpath has even spent a large share of their limited engineering resources refining the feature to this point. That hypothetical situation to me is exactly when you at least file the provisional.
Even if you never file the utility patent, you can claim “Patent Pending” and [US] competitors would be more likely to hold off on cloning your UX straight away, or could maybe tilt the scales toward an acquisition.
A generic “snap drawing to route” should not be patentable due to I’m sure copious prior art. The question is if there’s something unique Footpath is doing to make it work particularly well for their users (TFA hunted that there was) that breaks new ground.