[bryanrasmussen]

The advice about jurisdictions here is sound with the caveat that you will probably be able to limit yourself to some jurisdictions as being really important for you to focus on.

As far as patents I would only find them interesting if they can be used to secure you more funding. Some sources may consider it a plus if you have something patentable.

Probably for a startup however the cost of patents will be more than they're worth, just like for a startup having a dedicated devops team and onsite servers probably isn't worth it.