I am filing provisional patents on some core technical approaches so I can share more openly with early design partners and investors.
Curious from folks who have raised Pre-Seed/Seed or worked with early-stage companies: - Do provisionals meaningfully help in fundraising or partnerships? - Or were they mostly noise until later rounds / real traction?
I am trying to calibrate how much time/energy to put into IP vs just shipping + user traction at this stage.
Would love to hear real world experiences.
The biggest risk to building a startup isn't "can I build this thing" (feasibility risk). It's "will people even care if I build this thing" (value risk) then "can I do it in a way people use" (usability risk). Patents help solve business risk, but that's generally considered to be the 4th (and last) of the risks.
There are exceptions where patents do need to be filed first or the business viability dies. However, I generally assume that if you've addressed value, usability, and feasibility risks to create something truly meaningful, your competitors will find a work around to deliver the same value, usability, and feasibility without infringing on your patent. Thus, patents, are nothing but a minor inconvenience. In some cases, the public filing of a patent, can give your competitors a leg up on competing with you.
https://www.svpg.com/four-big-risks/
Trade secrets are far cheaper and easier to maintain than patents. In short, patents are only as strong as your ability to enforce them. Also Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International (2014) weakened software and process patents. That said, if you can’t realistically defend IP in court, you effectively don’t have it. From an early-stage founder perspective, that makes patents a questionable use of time and money and potentially what kills the company.
This may contrast from information you get from a lawyer or VC. Patents are attractive because they create an asset someone else can later buy or defend. For the founder, the incentives aren’t squarely aligned.
Neither approach is more right or wrong, but there are very real practical consequences. If you are pre-seed who is bootstrapped or done a family & friends round and are pre or early revenue, trade secrecy is by far your better option.
As an additional note, if you don't own the underlying AI models and are just a better wrapper for Claude or ChatGPT you at best have a very weak IP or patent position.
I would start accumulating patents at a gradual pace at around $100m ARR in preparation for IPO, assuming that you feel that is in the cards.
(This sort of thing tend to confuse people since, the US patent office doesn't check for patent validity before granting patents. So there are a lot of companies that own invalid patents which have simply never been challenged in court.)
If you live elsewhere you should look into the laws of your local jurisdiction, but many places have the same or similar legal doctrine.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_v._Flook
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_United_...