Today, Alistair Barr of USA Today wrote an interesting article The other reason Google bought Nest: patents. It notes bringing Tony Fadell and his group of talented x-Apple developers is not all that made Nest so valuable. I agree with Mr. Barr's article, and would add Nest's foresight to build a significant patent portfolio to protect its innovative technology is what many startups should be doing. Don't listen to anyone who tells you don't file on your inventions because you don't have money to enforce your patent rights in court. This assumes your company will not be bought by another company which does have financial resources to monetize the patents, that contingency fee representation does not exist, and/or that the patent(s) cannot be licensed and/or sold to a company able to best leverage the value in the patent.
Thanks to Alan Snyder for sending this article my way!
Copyright © 2014 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.
