I remember learning about the pros and cons of patents vs trade secrets a few years ago- it's a lot less cut and dried than that. With trade secrets, you just h

I remember learning about the pros and cons of patents vs trade secrets a few years ago- it's a lot less cut and dried than that. With trade secrets, you just have to make a reasonable effort to keep them secret, and then if it gets out you can sue for theft (or some such). As long as there's a secret sauce you can keep out of the public eye it's nearly functionally equivalent. > The application that I've seen so far that was the most difficult to reject was made difficult by extremely specific claims. Tradeoffs: the narrower the patent, the less useful it is, because it's that much easier for your competition to just tweak something inconsequential. > once your product begins selling and Microsoft creates a fast-follow product you can sue Not that easy - you need to be able to afford a patent law fight. Big companies like MS might just take it anyway and risk the lawsuit, because they can afford to drag it out longer than you can stay solvent. On the other hand, if you go the trade secret route, Microsoft can't fast-follow because you didn't publish the whole thing.