Question for founders: Do you own your technology?

Patents offer an illusion of protection -- their only real value is in boosting one's valuation. I think most technical barriers are an illusion too. It's ridiculously hard to create something new that actually works for users, but it's almost always trivial to clone something that exists.

Sites with no competitive technical barriers: YouTube/Flickr/MySpace/Digg/Reddit/Blogger/Slashdot/IMDB, etc.

Look how quickly video sites sprang up once YouTube showed us how to do it well. And despite the flood of more technically advanced clones, no one is making a dent in YouTube's traffic.

It's one thing to have a novel idea. But do you have a competitive advantage in the form of, say, a patent? Discuss!