It's a waste of time and money, for a few reasons. 1. Suppose you get your patent. You won't enforce against an infringer unless at least one of you is making

It's a waste of time and money, for a few reasons. 1. Suppose you get your patent. You won't enforce against an infringer unless at least one of you is making a lot of money from it. You'll already be beating the odds if you get that far -- nice problem to have. 2. It's software. It's one solution to a problem, among many. If someone is infringing and needs to work do something else, other solutions are out there. Obviously I don't know what problem you are solving, or whether your solution is the only practical one, but usually there are workarounds. 3. A patent is no guarantee that you will benefit from your work financially. You will also need to build a business around your software, which will probably dwarf the effort you've put in to date. And if someone else does that work, infringing your patent, you are unlikely to make money licensing your work (see #2). You will probably have to sue (assuming they don't voluntarily pay you), which is more time and money. I can think of two reasons for getting a software patent. 1) You are trying to get VC funding. VCs love patents. 2) You work for a big company and they collect patents. That's obviously not you. Also: assuming you work for some company now, check your employee agreement. They may actually have rights to your IP.