Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mixmax | Hacker News Reader

I've started two companies that took out patents, and thus have seen this up close. My experience is:

- The market doesn't care about patents. Whether your product is good or bad a patent makes absolutely no difference to a customer.

- Competitors care very little about patents. They know the cost of patent litigation, and that you probably can't afford it. Even if you could they would probably be able to strike a deal.

- Investors, on the other hand, do care about patents. The thinking seems to go along the lones of I have no idea which company to invest in, but the ones that have a patent must be the smart ones. So those are the ones I'll invest in. - This is from Denmark, and may be different depending on your meatspace coordinates.

- Patents take time and focus. Patenting takes the focus off your product and selling it, and patents don't get you customers.

I would say that if you're gunning for investors get a patent, if you're not don't.

Hope it helps.

Edit: bonusinfo: If you have to go out and get a job at some point later in life a patent definitely helps. Employers are pretty impressed when you can say that you're so smart that you've taken out a patent...

Investors, on the other hand, do care about patents.

This is one reason to keep patents provisional as long as possible - you get the investors to cover the capital outlay of executing the patent.

If you launch into the WIPO "International Patent" process, for an upfront cost (US$5k or so - varies a lot on circumstances) you can extend the process by quite a bit - up to 18 months iirc. My bus partner wrote a blog on this after we'd done rounds of meetings with attorneys : http://www.jodoro.com/2008/09/patent-discussions.html

Sound advice.

Thanks for the tip. Right now we are thinking about dropping the whole thing but we'll talk to our lawyer tomorrow and see what kind of wiggle room there is.

If you'd like to get advice from other inventors there's usually an inventors association nearby. Expect every opinion under the sun, but it may help. Usually there are experienced inventors who donate their time to help out new inventors and just jawbone.

You're saying that you can extend your U.S. filing date [EDIT: what I mean here by "U.S. filing date" is the deadline for filing the actual U.S. patent application] by filing a (essentially international provisional application) PCT? That doesn't sound correct, based on this: http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/foreign-filing-i...

[EDIT] I stand corrected. Apparently, there is an international (PCT) route to U.S. patents. http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/pct_strategies/the_third_way.pdf [PDF]

the “international route” of the PCT to U.S. patent issuance. [...] THIRD WAY IS BEST WAY This Third Way of using the PCT as a matter of domestic U.S. patenting strategy gains many advantages for the applicant to control the timing of search and examination of the U.S. application, if one begins with a Provisional Patent Application.

The filing date always stays the same (ed: Sorry, I meant priority date there) - but, yes, that's my understanding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty

USPTO has a diagram here: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/1800_184...

Under their system, it the whole process (to what they call the national phase) can be 30months - it varies from country to country, but 30 seems to be common. http://www.wipo.int/pct/en/texts/pdf/time_limits.pdf

OK, thanks. I should have checked on this information before posting. Sorry.

Most startups that succeed do it by getting bought, and most acquirers care about patents. Startup acquisitions are usually a build-vs-buy decision for the acquirer. Should we buy this little startup or build our own? And two things, especially, make them decide not to build their own: if you already have a large and rapidly growing user base, and if you have a fairly solid patent application on critical parts of your software.

http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

Excellent points. My experience is no further than a DIY provisional patent, using "Patent It Yourself" (which seems a little bit unreliable to me).

A danger I've found with patenting is that it encourages a competitor-focus (attack and defend), instead of a customer-focus (making a difference, creating something needed).

Patenting has similarities to a research thesis - articulating the idea helps you understand it; researching prior art contributes to your store of ideas.

Thanks - kind of what I was hoping someone would say. Our lawyer is a bit of a salesman, not really, but it amounts to as much, him saying "if you don't do X, Y Z bad things might happen." but we are thinking, it would mean we are in a good position if we do get sued for patent infringement or whatever down the road if someone else goes for this, etc. It kind of feels like an insurance policy that we can't afford for a set of circumstances that don't seem all that likely.

Totally agree on the focus issue, my partner is spending all her time stressing about this b/c the clock is ticking and I ended up reading a bunch of patents the other day as well instead of focusing on the product.

Thanks for a business perspective - we are new to this so I really do appreciate your thoughts on the subject.

No worries. Throw me a mail if you want to talk more :-)

By lodging a provisional and having a released product that implements the invention, I believe no one else can patent that invention, even if you don't proceed with the patent. Ask your lawyer. A patent search will reveal if someone else has patented this already and would be a bit cheaper. Also shop around and get quotes from a couple of lawyers.

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