Yes.
And, by the way, I’m not joking with that answer. I’m not saying you need 17 patents. I’m not saying you need any patents at all — but you probably do. I am saying that despite the frenetic life of running a startup, you need to step back from time to time — maybe once a year or maybe on a cycle before your product releases — take a minute to learn (or remind yourself of) the basics of patents, and then sit down with your technical leaders and your intellectual property (IP) counsel to have a chat.
That is, you may not need to file any patents right now, but you do need to understand patents and devise your company’s strategy for them.
Waiting is not a great option for two reasons:
- If you don’t have patents when you need them, it will be too late
- You can lose important rights to your inventions if you fail to patent them before certain milestones
To help you with this process, my Balderton colleagues Dan Teodosiu, Andrew Wigfall, and I recently published a Balderton Perspective entitled: Why Your Startup Needs a Patent Strategy.
The three of us work as EIRs at Balderton, where our role is to advise portfolio companies on operational matters. Dan’s a product/technology guy, Andrew’s a lawyer, and I’m a marketer and former CEO. So we’re kind of the perfect trio to write such an article and provide a holistic view of the subject.
The piece discusses the following topics:
- Why to file patents
- A quick introduction to patents
- What a patent strategy is and why you need one
- How to define your patent strategy
I encourage all founders and technology or product leaders to read it and then get cracking on your company’s patent strategy.
