[pyre]

I'm curious what the bias of patents classes in law school are (at least in your case). Are lawyers really taught that when an engineer brings them an 'invention' to patent they are supposed to try and expand the scope of that patent to absurd levels just because they think that they can sneak it past the patent examiners by making the language so obtuse that the simple act of inhaling and exhaling clocks in at 2,000 pages?

[arethuza]

Having been coerced into having work of mine patented I can honestly say that once the IP "professionals" are finished with your description of your work you will barely recognize the content - straightforward claims and descriptions are translated into vague, overly general, statements of the type that seem to be specifically designed to annoy technical folks.

I found the whole process deeply unpleasant - but as it was mandated by our VC investors, even though I was CTO, I couldn't say "no".

[CamperBob]

Actually, people in your position can, and have, said "no" to demands by investors to cooperate with patent filings.

It takes a hell of a lot of guts, admittedly, but doing the right thing often does. The decision has to be made at a pre-investment stage, because you don't want to be placed in a breach-of-contract position later.

[arethuza]

This was a while ago (about 10 years) and I only had a vague idea that patents were a bad idea from a practical perspective - I was mainly motivated to try and avoid doing them because it was a huge amount of work, I hate reading "legalese" and I thought there were better things I could be doing.

So my objections were mainly selfish rather than principled. I like to think these days I would act on principle...