

Ask HN: where do you draw the patent research line? - stevejalim

[Clarification: In all of the below, I'm talking about patent-checking to guard against infringement of others' patents, rather than protecting my own stuff]<p>When you've got an idea you like and believe in, how much time should you dedicate to patent research before getting into proper planning, coding and all the rest of the fun stuff?<p>a) Lots, be exhaustive<p>b) Some [any estimates of how much?]<p>c) None, just get it out there<p>I ask because a couple of years ago, for a startup that didn't make it to market (for a reason totally unconnected with patents), I spent the best part of two soul-destroying months poring over lots and lots of chunky patent documents, looking for things that might block what we were trying to do.<p>After all that time, an IP lawyer friend of mine said (in more or less these words) 'Just get it out there and see if anyone complains, then deal with it'. I'm operating in the UK, too, which seems to have a more favourable (for me) view of the ridiculousness of [edit] some [/edit] software patents, too, in the sense that they're harder to enforce over here, I gather. So in the end, we just went ahead (but then got sunk by another issue, but that's a different story, dammit.)<p>So, I was just wondering what the HN community thinks about it all. Did you spend ages poring over patents before cutting any code, too?
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10ren
_c) None, just get it out there_

At first I thought you were doing a patent search to apply for a patent -
which makes sense. But on rereading, I think you're just checking to be sure
that you're not infringing on anyone else's patents. I agree with your IP
friend: if you're not going to patent your invention - there's no point
searching at all (and there's even the risk of triple punitive damages in some
jurisdictions, as sgrove noted.)

If you infringe on someone's patent (and they care), you can probably code
around it. But unless you are competing directly with their product, they
won't care. Here's pg's take on it:

 _What does that mean in practice? We tell the startups we fund not to worry
about infringing patents, because startups rarely get sued for patent
infringement. There are only two reasons someone might sue you: for money, or
to prevent you from competing with them. Startups are too poor to be worth
suing for money. And in practice they don't seem to get sued much by
competitors, either. They don't get sued by other startups because (a) patent
suits are an expensive distraction, and (b) since the other startups are as
young as they are, their patents probably haven't issued yet. [3] Nor do
startups, at least in the software business, seem to get sued much by
established competitors. Despite all the patents Microsoft holds, I don't know
of an instance where they sued a startup for patent infringement. Companies
like Microsoft and Oracle don't win by winning lawsuits. That's too uncertain.
They win by locking competitors out of their sales channels. If you do manage
to threaten them, they're more likely to buy you than sue you._
<http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html>

~~~
stevejalim
Thanks 10ren - that's interesting (and reassuring) to hear. Kinda the answer I
was _hoping_ for, in fact.

~~~
10ren
I edited out part of my comment where I said that doing that month's research
was a "fear-based approach".

I deleted it because I didn't think it added anything; but today I noticed
that some things I am doing are fear-based in a similar way - what if the work
I'm doing isn't as new as I hope it is? And I noticed I was afraid... because
checking it out would be an exhausting distraction - and not guaranteed to
find it anyway. So I'm a sitting duck! My comment to you helped me to notice
that _I_ was taking a fear-based approach. Hence this reply to reinstate it.

Fears, _even if accurate_ , are not particularly helpful to a startup.

~~~
stevejalim
Yeah, I agree about the fear-based thing. I certainly was operating from that
POV for the startup I was talking about above - mainly cos it was my first
experiences of it all, etc, and it was an idea I'd been sat on for years and
was emotionally very close to it. I am definitely operating more out of the
headspace of being propelled by excitement/a wish to make things happen these
days, tho do still notice the fear factor creeping in from time to time... :o)

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sgrove
Back in my research days I was going to apply for a certain patent, and spoke
to a lawyer at the university about monetizing it. He ended up telling me that
it can actually be dangerous to be too exhaustive in your research. You want
to do a general search of a few databases of your _general_ idea, but if
you're very concerned about the idea you'll need to sanitize it by have
someone else look and inform you if they find anything that's _specifically_
applies to you.

If you find something that might apply to you, and it could be shown that you
knew of the patent before you started (e.g. you told potential investors
"There are only a few patents that could hold us up, like...[blah]...but we're
confident it doesn't apply to us" and continued to try to monetize it, you
could be up for punitive damages. Painful indeed.

Have a knowledgeable friend who you trust and would look out for you do the
searching. They'll probably put in just the right amount of time - quite a
bit, because they care about you, but not so much that it would impact them
too much - and you're free to claim ignorance if anything comes up later.

If anyone knows anything wrong with this advice, it would be great to knock
some sense into me at this point!

~~~
stevejalim
Thanks for the view. In that light, one upside to my plan (no investment other
than sweat from me and maybe a couple of others), is that if I take on the
risk, all I'd be risking is lost time/opportunity cost, rather than venture
cash.

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swombat
I'd go for (c).

If people sue you for infringement of an obscure patent, they'll only do it if
they think you're successful enough to be worth suing. Even then, you win (as
in, you've managed to build a successful product).

From the protection side, imho, if you have to rely on patents to protect your
business, you're probably doing it wrong.

~~~
pclark
_From the protection side, imho, if you have to rely on patents to protect
your business, you're probably doing it wrong._

Sucks to be ARM/Qualcomm/Broadcom/$ChipFirm right now.

~~~
cjg
Not quite sure why you lump ARM in with Qualcomm and Broadcom. I would think
it would be great to be ARM right now with more than 10 billion ARM processors
on the planet.

~~~
pclark
was just the first "big" hardware name that came to mind. (they're in my city)

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frankj
Before hiring a lawyer I would check out Patents.com and do a quick search for
my space and see if there is anything out there that is adjacent to my IP.
This costs nothing and gives me a good idea of what others are thinking.

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10ren
Just FYI, here's the link for making a poll:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll>

~~~
stevejalim
Ah, thanks. In a way, it's less about the polling and more about the
discussion, but I'll bookmark it for the future :o)

