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The Invention Disclosure Meeting Is Where Patent Value Is Decided
Not filing. Not prosecution. Not litigation. The hour before drafting begins determines whether the patent will ever matter. The single most important event in the life of a patent is not filing. It is not prosecution. It is not litigation. It is the invention disclosure meeting. Most companies treat that meeting as procedural — a…
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The URGENT Email from your Patent Attorney
You don’t feel qualified to answer it. You cannot afford to ignore it. And your attorney cannot make the decision for you. You are in the middle of a product launch, a board meeting, or a sales cycle. Your phone buzzes. Subject line: URGENT — Response Required — Deadline March 15 It is from your…
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Why Patent Competence Is a C-Suite Responsibility
Why outsourcing it to a patent attorney is one of the most common — and expensive — mistakes founders make There’s a simple test for whether a patent actually matters: Did it change your competitor’s behavior? If the answer is no, then whatever you have is not protection. It may be a patent in the…
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Are Patents Still Relevant in the Age of AI?
The cost to build software is collapsing. Not slowly. Not incrementally. It’s collapsing fast enough that entire assumptions about startups, competition, and defensibility no longer hold. AI has changed the economics of software development in two fundamental ways. First, it has reduced the time required to build functional products. Second, it has reduced the number…
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Myth: Patents Have Intrinsic Value
Why Revenue Is the Only Metric of Value There is a deeply embedded myth in the startup, investor, and legal ecosystems that patents have intrinsic value. That simply owning a patent means you own “something valuable.” That belief is not just wrong — it is dangerously wrong. We have written before about this exact misconception…
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CES and Grifting the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Grifting in the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem I just returned from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I have been going for many years, and I thoroughly enjoy the show in many respects, but the grifting in the entrepreneurial ecosystem is out of hand. CES has an area called “Eureka Park.” It is touted as the…
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Stolen Valor: How Sleazy Patent Attorneys Abuse Inventorship
For an innovator, being named as an inventor on a patent is the crowning achievement of a career. Being named an inventor says that the person has contributed something to humanity that has never existed, and that accomplishment is memorialized forever in the patent database. Being an inventor is huge. But what happens when the…
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Four Horsemen of the Investor Apocalypse
Contempt That Destroys Investor–Entrepreneur Relationships Contempt is one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Once it shows up, it is the end of a relationship. Contempt doesn’t look like shouting. It is mostly passive aggressive. It masquerades as “patience” that overlays growing frustration. In a previous post, we talked about how an entrepreneur can…
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AI-Assisted Patent Search Tools Exacerbate Inventor Biases
AI chat tools have two problems: over-simplification and hallucination. These two problems mimic inventor’s biases when doing patent searches, leading to bad results. Inventors and entrepreneurs might love the idea of using an AI‑powered search tool to check “Did I do something new?” fast and cheap. It sounds smart. It sounds responsible. I am a…
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Your Patent Attorney Is NOT Giving Business Advice
Are you getting a list of options or a strategy that aligns with your business? Is that “strategy” more tailored to the Law Firm’s billing or your success? Most inventors think that hiring a patent attorney[1] means they’re protected. That’s a mistake. Patent attorneys are trained to give you every possible option. Want a provisional?…