I've only done the "official" route for various companies I've worked for. Personally, I've created some little "widget" type devices for home automation and s

I've only done the "official" route for various companies I've worked for. Personally, I've created some little "widget" type devices for home automation and similar applications. In those cases, I skipped the whole patent/legal thing, as the product did not have the lifespan or net sales volume to warrant dumping too much money into the project. I just setup a properly manages/documented LLC for liability purposes and went at it. As far as being a pain in the ass, it's all a matter of perspective I guess. I find that releasing actual physical product (typically as a hardware/software combo) is more challenging and rewarding than any sort of webapp. You have to get more things "right" and think more about the consequences of your decisions for short and long term durations when you are putting out a product that you can't fix a defect for by releasing an update to a server under your control. That is not to say that I don't respect or appreciate the webapp stuff, just that I prefer a different set of challenges.