tech-company, intellectual-property, lean-startup, patent, agileA friend tells me it’s not worth it to get a patent on a web application because they are not useful. Either the USPTO has stopped granting patents on “process” improvements (i.e. web apps) or they are not useful once granted.
Take, for example, the fact that Amazon technically owns the patent for selling stuff over the internet.
So I ask this community:
Are technology patents useful?
Things to consider:
Will it help? These days we’re living in a world where a company the other side of the planet can compete with you. So will just having a US patent help you?
Is it worth the money? Getting a patent, especially if you want to get international patents too (see previous point), is a non-trivial expense. Is it better to spend that money elsewhere in your startup?
Could you afford to defend it? Having a patent doesn’t mean other people automatically never infringe on it. You have to defend it. In court. Can you afford the expensive in time, money and people?
Is it defendable: Just because you get a patent granted does not mean that there isn’t something out there that will mean it gets struck down at a later date. Can you survive without the patent?
All this has to be balanced against how valuable you think the technological innovation is.
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