Fascinating. I keep hearing from a couple of people about how much effort, time, and money they are putting into their patent application process, fairly early

Fascinating. I keep hearing from a couple of people about how much effort, time, and money they are putting into their patent application process, fairly early on. One of them, a founder, supposedly has experience pitching to VCs, and claims that VCs always ask: "How is your product protected? What prevents others from copying your idea and outcompeting you?" He also claims the VCs expect to hear a simple answer "We have a dozen patents pending on our technology." I wonder now if he doesn't know what he's talking about, or if the VCs writing these "build your product, don't worry so much about IP protection yet" are the cream of the crop who actually have a clue, but are completely out of reach for most (especially first-time) entrepreneurs.