Ask HN: How much should you worry about patents when developing a product?

10 points by thecodingmonk 7 years ago | 1 comment

If you're developing a product which uses advanced technology (developed by yourself), how much should you be worried that a part of what you are developing could already be patented by somebody else?

I'm not at all an expert regarding patents and my understanding is that they only apply in very specific/constrained situations, making an overlap with any other situation really unlikely. However, a search for keywords related to what I'm creating results in hundreds of patents with vaguely similar concepts and/or technologies.

The product that I'm developing is indeed based on somewhat advanced and technical AI and NLP stuff, but 90% of it is already described in publicly accessible scientific research articles. All things considered, I'm pretty sure that we're on the safe side here, but my cofounder expressed some concerns about this so I would like to make sure what the best course of action is, also considering that going through hundred of patents is a huge time sink not really a feasible task for a small startup with no revenue.

matt_the_bass 7 years ago |

Patents don’t prevent anyone from infringing on them. They only give the patent assignee the right to litigate. If you have no revenue, there is little monetary incentive to go after you.

IANAL but in my opinion you need to first prove to yourself that you have a product that customers want. After that you can figure out if your current approach is how you should continue to proceed. If so, you’ll then have some revenues to hire a petent attorney for some legal advice.

With all due respect, I’d be really surprised if whatever problem you’re trying to solve can only be solved one way. So if you did in fact infringe and if some patent assigned did in fact care, you could likely chose between: negotiating a license, changing your solution, giving them the finger and forcing them to litigate.