[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...