The problem with this hypothesis is that you never hear anyone in the startup community talk about their patents and how much they are worth. Not on HN, not in

The problem with this hypothesis is that you never hear anyone in the startup community talk about their patents and how much they are worth. Not on HN, not in the media, not on Techcrunch. You never see an "Ask HN" about how to file a patent, or license a patent, or litigate a patent. And I don't recall ever hearing a VC talk up the awesomeness of patents, or encourage a startup to waste even 0.1% of its time filing for patents instead of doing something more valuable.