Do you patent? | Hacker News Reader

Do you patent?

5 pointserikstarck6 comments

How common is it for HN-reading startups to think about patenting their ideas? What's the view on patents amongst the VC-crowd of Silicon Valley? Any thoughts/experiences?

View on HN

I've done two startups where I took out a patent. My experience is that the only people that will ever look at your patent is your VC, and he'll only glance over it.

It's a lot of work that could be spent productively doing something else, so I've stopped patenting stuff. I think it just isn't worth it.

I'm not in Silicon Valley, I run two companies, neither is a start-up. Neither company uses patents.

We prefer to have things as "commercial secrets" and make them sufficiently obscure that by the time someone reverse engineers them either we have an improvement in place, or we have enough of the market that it's not worth their effort to go through implementation.

If you go the patent route then you have to have effectively full disclosure. To enforce your patent you have to detect infringement, issue "Cease and Desist" orders, then pursue through the courts. If the person infringing is in another country then the only benefactors will be the lawyers. Anyone who infringes will make money, then disappear.

That's for my fields, and YMMV. The only people who have ever cared about patents are those who have money to invest, and don't actually understand the business. They want to see their investment protected, and think patents will do it.

There is now one exception to this, and that's for an innovation that we think can't subsequently be upgraded. You need to follow through the decision tree, with assigned probabilities, and the outcomes. Basically, do some Game Theory.

If you go the patent route then you have to have effectively full disclosure.

In practice when big companies file patents they make sure to leave out enough information to make the patents as unhelpful as possible. If you were trying to replicate my work it would be pretty close to useless to use my patents.

We decided to keep our project in stealth for the last two years until we had our patent filed. We thought that this plan suited our project as we have unique IP with hardly any conflicts in the patent searches. This path has meant it's taken more time to get to the point of having a demo, which is crucial of course, but means that all IP elements of our project are protected before we go live. I think in the end, it comes down to - can you afford to fight any infringement of your patent should someone try a similar product.

Thanks everyone for the replies. I agree, this is an interesting discussion. It seems like patents are such a thing that many people who's not entrepreneurs (including VCs) assume you have to do but very few question why. It's like "oh, you have a startup in high-tech, must have a patent, then?".

I would guess the general opinion in the HN-crowd is that ideas are worthless and that execution counts. Well, patents are "just" ideas. So, are they worthless? If so, why does everyone keep asking about them?

This is an interesting discussion. We're working on a startup and patenting is something a lot of people with a traditional business view keep asking us.

I love open source and patenting doesn't sit well with me. The idea of a'commercial secret' is more appealing because IMHO its more about competition and as a startup you can always out innovate your competitors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com