Let me get this straight…

So you’ve created some cool technology. Maybe it’s some new technology to share documents across the internet, or a way to answer your most pressing questions, or even some new way of matching data. And you’re pretty pleased – you want a patent, because a patent is cool. And a patent is a great way to protect your intellectual property. Or is it?

You’ll hear that you can apply for a patent, and only 2-3 years later, you’ll have the government protecting your technology. Sounds like a great idea. Except it’s not entirely true. A patent is very useful – if you happen to be in the business of defending patents. If you happen to have a hundred or so patents around an idea, and fully intend to sue for them, then by all means, pursue it. But don’t expect it to protect you from someone else trying to do the same thing. A single patent offers very little protection, because there are generally many many ways around it, unless you’ve got most of those covered. More importantly, don’t expect to be able to focus on your core business if you do patent it – you’ll be way too busy suing people over patent infringement.

OK, so what about the cool aspect? Yeah, it’s kind of cool to say “I have a patent”. But does cool make you money? Well, all those late night infomercials say things like “with our patent pending design, not only will you never need to cook again, but you’ll also trim inches off your waist, AND improve your golf swing!” I don’t know, maybe being patent pending helps to sell a $14.95 tool that allows you to fry an egg while it’s still inside its shell. But from my experience, it gains you nothing. Why? TeraMatch was patent pending for six years, before we stopped pursuing the patent for it. By this time, we had changed the implementation and the idea so drastically that the original technology was primitive in comparison. Would we defend it? no way – too much else going on. Did we sell any deals because of the patent? Nope, not one.

My advice for startup technologists? Skip the patent – figure out something cool, make the technology good enough, and sell the hell out of it.