> I've always thought of that as representing a stifling of innovation.
Sadly, over my long career as a tech startup entrepreneur, my experience has been that your assumption is correct the vast majority of the time. Now when I teach or mentor young tech entrepreneurs I'm often explaining why they probably don't want to prioritize filing patents as part of their startup strategy. While there are certain exceptions, especially in pharma, biotech, materials science or medical fields, the years it takes for a patent to become enforceable and then the upfront cost + further years required to actually get a judgement, make patents largely ineffective in most startup contexts. There's also substantial uncertainty as to whether a startup can get the patent granted at all. After that, there's the challenge of getting it granted in a form which remains defensible and can't be easily worked around. Many people don't realize patent examiners can refuse to grant a patent unless the applicant narrows the claims.
Conversely, as a tech startup these days you do need to worry about patents potentially being used against you. The majority of tech patent cases are giant vs giant fighting over turf, a large incumbent trying to kneecap an emerging startup competitor (usually filing suit to make the startup unattractive to investors for a year and never intending to actually go to court) or patent troll vs everyone. Personally, I had both a giant trying to stop my startup's Series A funding and several patent trolls. Despite having no actual merit, the giant's suit did freeze our Series A and we nearly died. After seven months we'd demonstrated we could survive without a Series A so they dropped the suit (of course) but by then they'd cost us more than half our cash in just defending an obviously sham claim. As one investor told me, "Yes, it's clearly a bullshit claim but it will still cost serious money and a lot of founder attention over the next 18 months to get it thrown out and that, unfortunately, tips this deal over our risk threshold." And responding to the constant patent trolls just burns up startup founder attention and scarce cash in nuisance legal fees.
Despite the old-school trope of "garage inventor patents invention, makes fortune", frankly, from the perspective of fostering typical tech startups, you'd probably prefer a world where there were no patents outside of pharma, medical, bio, etc.
I wonder how frequent that is, the "We've pointless patents. And legal budget larger than your last round. Thank for playing, goodbye." It seems a reoccurring theme.
But as for the usefulness of patents to startups, at least with material-science-y hardware, I've heard possession of a defensive patent portfolio described as "table stakes" for existence, with enforceability et al being secondary.
It was interesting watching patents and unicorn dreams shape VR. Instead of years of commercial ferment exploring low-hanging niches, we wait for monoliths to eventually create maximally-hard mass-market consumer tech, and will then backfill easier niches, eventually. An industrial policy optimized for pharma, yielding pharma-shaped industries.
Pardon my language but the patent thing has turned into a **** measuring contest, and serves no useful purpose.
When I worked at FAANG you had a whole class of PE engineer who literally couldn’t build anything to save their lives. But they would constantly file patents with a frenzy like IT guys rack up certifications. Of course when the patent office gets an application from $FAANG they approve it.
And people who aren’t in the know just see patent on the resume and keep hiring these people thinking they are the next Elon Musk or something, unfortunately.
Sadly, over my long career as a tech startup entrepreneur, my experience has been that your assumption is correct the vast majority of the time. Now when I teach or mentor young tech entrepreneurs I'm often explaining why they probably don't want to prioritize filing patents as part of their startup strategy. While there are certain exceptions, especially in pharma, biotech, materials science or medical fields, the years it takes for a patent to become enforceable and then the upfront cost + further years required to actually get a judgement, make patents largely ineffective in most startup contexts. There's also substantial uncertainty as to whether a startup can get the patent granted at all. After that, there's the challenge of getting it granted in a form which remains defensible and can't be easily worked around. Many people don't realize patent examiners can refuse to grant a patent unless the applicant narrows the claims.
Conversely, as a tech startup these days you do need to worry about patents potentially being used against you. The majority of tech patent cases are giant vs giant fighting over turf, a large incumbent trying to kneecap an emerging startup competitor (usually filing suit to make the startup unattractive to investors for a year and never intending to actually go to court) or patent troll vs everyone. Personally, I had both a giant trying to stop my startup's Series A funding and several patent trolls. Despite having no actual merit, the giant's suit did freeze our Series A and we nearly died. After seven months we'd demonstrated we could survive without a Series A so they dropped the suit (of course) but by then they'd cost us more than half our cash in just defending an obviously sham claim. As one investor told me, "Yes, it's clearly a bullshit claim but it will still cost serious money and a lot of founder attention over the next 18 months to get it thrown out and that, unfortunately, tips this deal over our risk threshold." And responding to the constant patent trolls just burns up startup founder attention and scarce cash in nuisance legal fees.
Despite the old-school trope of "garage inventor patents invention, makes fortune", frankly, from the perspective of fostering typical tech startups, you'd probably prefer a world where there were no patents outside of pharma, medical, bio, etc.