All valid concerns! Any business is unlikely to stand or fall based on its patents. Brand, quality of execution, and the team are all where the big part of the

All valid concerns! Any business is unlikely to stand or fall based on its patents. Brand, quality of execution, and the team are all where the big part of the value lies. You're also absolutely right that litigation is expensive, and most early-stage companies will never file a lawsuit. But patents actually create a lot of value for start-ups, and in practice, leverage can come from fundraising and acquisitions, competitive deterrence, and, hopefully, preventing someone else from filing a patent that blocks yours. Very few patents are actually enforced, but they do add value in other ways. Re the clean-room / LLM reverse engineering point: patents don't protect code, they protect mechanisms. If someone clean-rooms a different implementation of the same underlying technique, the patent still covers it. That's actually the whole point of a patent vs. copyright. Just executing well and hoping the best person wins is philosophically correct and justifiable. Unfortunately, though, sometimes it's not an even playing field. A big player with significant resources can quickly squash an early-stage start with fantastic ideas. I also say a big part of inventing is just identifying the problem. I've worked with a lot of startups that have really identified a gap in the market or a particular need and worked hard to develop a solution. Just to have a quick follow slipstream on all of that domain experience and hard work can be incredibly frustrating. Maybe not the most satisfying response, but hopefully of some value. Thanks for commenting.