And I am of two minds. The system sucks. It shouldn't be patentable. In fact, even if I get a patent, it won't be the determinant of success or failure; it's mostly there to make the company more attractive to investors.
On the other hand, is/ought problem. There's what I'd like the world to be. And there's what the world is.
(And yes: my lawyer is pushing me to come up with the broadest, vaguest description of my invention possible).
In terms of making a company attractive to investors, is a block of resources better spent in obtaining a patent or advancing product development? Is the answer different between a start-up and not a start-up?
I'm genuinely interested in the answer, as it strikes me that the answer is not clear cut.
I'm actually torn on the issue. I can see that a patent has the advantage of conferring exclusivity, but time and money consumed might increase time to market and the "sunk cost" of a patent and might deter a much needed change of direction or technology.
I've been touched by patents twice. The first time was as an employee of a start-up based on a patent by a PhD student. In that case I think the company got blinkered by need to "implement the patent" and got overtaken by others who were more flexible.
The other was commercialisation of WiFi. CSIRO owned the patent. Radiata the company did not own any patents (not sure if they licensed the CSIRO one). Within 3 years, Radiata got acquired by Cisco for AUD 560 million. I was later told by one of the founders that Cisco had decided to acquire whoever was first to market, and Radiata got lucky and beat Atheros by 2 weeks. Investing 2 weeks into taking out patents could have been very costly!
CSIRO eventually made about AUD 1 billion off their patent, but it took 20 years, involving a 10 year legal battle that cost them AUD 15 million per year.
Since then, my feelings have been that patents are fine if you are well established with deep pockets, but a potential liability otherwise. I'm always interested in data that challenges that view as I could well be wrong!
Don't take this as legal advice (it's not), but my personal belief is that money is better spent patenting novel/non-obvious subject matter. Execution is very, very hard; if you waste all of your money on a poorly-executed idea, you're basically out of luck.
While many people on here like to tout the idea that investors invest in teams, there are many more investors who don't trust people that much--they want to invest in something other than charisma. If all your company has is an idea on which you're feverishly working, it's all but worthless in the absence of patent protection.
And I am of two minds. The system sucks. It shouldn't be patentable. In fact, even if I get a patent, it won't be the determinant of success or failure; it's mostly there to make the company more attractive to investors.
On the other hand, is/ought problem. There's what I'd like the world to be. And there's what the world is.
(And yes: my lawyer is pushing me to come up with the broadest, vaguest description of my invention possible).