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by telecuda 1107 days ago
The most useful thing about software patents IMO is what you uncover during the patent writing process. When you’re sitting there writing the equivalent of a 10-20 page college essay on the problem background, operating environment, then all the present and future uses of something novel (the provisional stage), it forces you to think in a way that no typical product management process does. There are few (any?) other forcing mechanisms I’ve seen that produce the same results.
2 comments

And then the legal team runs it through the legalese obfuscator 9000 to make sure no one else will have any idea what it's even about.

Seriously, Google needed insider information at Sonos to infringe on their multi-room audio patent. Go read it and see if you could implement a working system from it https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/07/ef/fb/ac27ac8...

That’s true. The narrative can get lost or at least watered down in the process.
If your design or method is new and unique, just a write scientific paper about it. It is about the same.