...patent filings. It's not hard to do once you learn how (get the Nolo Press book "Patent it Yourself"). You'll do a better job than most patent attorneys and

...patent filings. It's not hard to do once you learn how (get the Nolo Press book "Patent it Yourself"). You'll do a better job than most patent attorneys and save yourself a lot of money. I have that book. It's quite good (and very encouraging), but I find it not very helpful for software patents (eg. it wouldn't help much for patenting PageRank). I agree that "most patent attorneys" wouldn't do a good job on a software patent, but the idea is to go to one who specializes in them (another plus for the Valley) - like the one that Google used (it's on the patent).