Imagine that you graduate university with some cool tech ideas. You develop a prototype and want to start building a business around it. You file a patent, hopi

Imagine that you graduate university with some cool tech ideas. You develop a prototype and want to start building a business around it. You file a patent, hoping it will protect you long enough to get your company off the ground -- often a 7 year mission. Does it? Not necessarily, but it is nice, in theory anyway, to think that big tech can't just rip off your idea at scale the first time somebody sees it In practice, my understanding is that you can't really afford to enforce your patent without a big legal team, and even then, the cost can sink your fledgling company I think the real problem is the cost of accessing and navigating the legal system (including: the cost of invalidating bogus patents)