Why Founders Keep Pushing Patents Aside (and Why It Comes Back to Bite Them)

Most founders don’t ignore patents because they think IP is useless.

They ignore it because it’s priority number ten.

Early on, there’s always something louder and more urgent:
-hiring your first people,
-trying to monetize the product,
-finding sales channels, etc.

Compared to that, patents feel abstract. They don’t move metrics this week. And at the early stage, there’s often just not enough time, money, or mental energy to deal with them properly.

So IP gets pushed into the “we’ll do it later” bucket.

The problem is that “later” usually shows up when it’s already painful.

Like an investor asks uncomfortable questions or a competitor ships something very similar.

At that point, fixing IP gaps is slower, more expensive, and sometimes impossible. In bad cases, you are risking the whole business.

The Other Problem: Nobody Knows Where To Start

Even founders who want to do IP “the right way” usually get stuck, because the starting point is unclear:

• What do you protect first?
• Which countries matter?
• How much will this cost in reality?
• How long does it take before anything useful happens?

Once more than one jurisdiction is involved, confusion multiplies. And when resources are limited, the fear of making the wrong first move often leads to more waiting.

So the problem is lack of a simple decision framework.

How Patent Strategy Actually Gets Decided

In reality, most sane IP strategies boil down to answering a few questions.

Where will the company actually make money?
If a market isn’t generating revenue, early protection there is usually a luxury. IP should follow business reality, not hypothetical expansion plans.

Where is the product easiest to copy?
Is it manufacturing? Core tech? Distribution? Process know-how? Those weak points deserve attention first.

Where does enforcement actually work?
A patent you can’t realistically enforce is close to zero value. This matters a lot when choosing jurisdictions.

How does the company plan to grow?
Regional expansion, partnerships, licensing, acquisition — different paths imply different IP priorities.

Clear answers on these questions tell you where to start.

Why The Classic Process Doesn’t Work Well For Founders

Traditionally, patenting starts with a law firm.

You talk to several firms, explain the same product and goals again and again, and wait for proposals that are hard to compare. Even choosing a contractor can take weeks.

Services are often sold as bundled packages, so you end up paying for things you don’t actually need yet.

If global coverage is required, costs grow even faster, because firms that operate internationally usually come with very high price tags.

Then comes the operational mess like documents are scattered across emails, attachments, and shared folders. There’s no single place to see what’s filed, what’s pending, and what’s missing. Tracking progress is unclear: it’s hard to know which task is at which stage and who’s responsible. For instance, iPNOTE keeps everything in one place.

When multiple jurisdictions and contractors are involved, communication happens through email or messengers. That’s where details get lost, deadlines slip, and issues surface late. And even then, there’s rarely a real guarantee that everything will be delivered on time and at consistent quality.
For founders, this creates constant friction and mental overhead, because the process itself is hard to manage without slowing the rest of the business down.

Why The Classic Approach Stopped Working

New approaches to patenting started to appear because the old workflow doesn’t match how startups actually operate.

They appeared to fix the operational gaps founders keep running into. Modern tools try to reorganize the process so it fits how startups actually work.

Instead of forcing founders to commit early and figure everything out through calls and emails, these tools surface key decisions upfront: where protection really matters, which jurisdictions make sense now, and what can wait. This makes costs and timelines clearer before too much time or money is spent.

They also centralize the work. Documents, tasks, deadlines, and communication live in one place, so it’s easier to see what’s filed, what’s pending, and who’s responsible. When multiple jurisdictions or contractors are involved, that visibility alone removes a lot of risk.

Most importantly, this structure helps founders avoid common mistakes: filing in the wrong countries first, overprotecting low-priority markets, delaying basic groundwork for too long, or treating IP as a one-time task instead of something that evolves with the business.

After seeing these patterns over and over, it’s easy to see why teams end up building tools like iPNOTE — the goal is to make patents manageable enough that founders can deal with them without slowing everything else down.

The Real Takeaway

Patents don’t hurt founders because they’re pointless or impossibly complex, but because they get postponed, misunderstood, and disconnected from the actual business.

With a clear strategy and the right structure, IP stops being a scary side quest. It becomes a set of decisions you make alongside product development — instead of something that explodes into a crisis when it’s already too late.