Founders Playbook

Most founders understand the excitement of being "patent pending." Few truly grasp what it means to have freedom to operate. The two are not the same—and confusing them can turn a product launch celebration into a crisis overnight when a cease-and-desist letter arrives from a patent holder you never knew existed.

Every intellectual property decision shapes your company's exit value. But the choice between patent protection and trade secret protection may be the single most consequential decision you make—particularly in artificial intelligence, machine learning, semiconductor manufacturing, and robotics, where the stakes are highest, and the tradeoffs are sharpest.

When you ask a technical founder "Is my innovation patentable?"—you've asked the wrong question. The real question is: "What competitive position does my innovation occupy in the existing technology landscape, and how should that shape my patent strategy, product development roadmap, and IP investment decisions?"

Before spending tens of thousands of dollars on patent prosecution, every technical founder and their investors should answer a fundamental question: Is this innovation actually patentable? The answer isn't always intuitive. Many genuinely innovative technologies in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and semiconductor design fail to meet patentability requirements, while less flashy innovations secure remarkably broad protection.

One of the first patent strategy decisions founders face is deceptively simple: Should I file a provisional or non-provisional patent application? Yet this choice is far from merely procedural—it cascades through your entire intellectual property timeline, affects your international options, and shapes how investors evaluate your startup during venture capital and IP due diligence.

Here's an uncomfortable truth that patent practitioners won't tell you: most invention disclosures never make it to filed applications. Not because the technology lacks merit, but because the documentation fails to provide what patent counsel actually needs to build a defensible patent application.