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The question of who owns the IP sounds like one for you and your investors and a lawyer. If it's you, and there's nothing else in the company of value then dissolving the company shouldn't be difficult. If the company owns the assets, retaining patent protection becomes more complicated and firing him and buying him out as part of the next round (you can raise subsequent rounds at higher valuations...) might be easier...

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Assuming the patent wasnt assigned to the startup, what about the remaining work product from the startup? Does one need to start with a clean slate for the new startup?

I invested the patent into the startup when I was founding it. The remaining work is brand design, hardware boards that need another round of redesign (some firmware code can be kept), and app re-development since CTO's work is unusable/not shared. So besides patent and branding, pretty much clean slate. (app design is mostly done)

Sounds like it would be difficult to transfer everything to a new company.

One thing I have seen in the past is people holding the IP separately and licensing the IP to the startup. that can avoid this situation or zombie companies, but hindsight is 20-20.

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