Our team’s work on investigating Intellectual Property (IP) issues for Invisible Industries has been very interesting and given us insights into the IP issues that startup companies have to worry about. A startup company not only has to know the various IP issues, but also must prepare a strategy to react if it receives notice of an infringement or discovers others infringing. That is because a startup company has limited resources and so, while the company might be right under the law, it might lack the resources to combat or pursue action with regards to IP.
Patents with relation to software are at a very unique status in patent law history. Because of a court ruling, patents were opened for software uses several years ago as computers were becoming popular. Up until the mid-2000’s, companies were using patents to protect different features of software. Amazon’s 1-click ordering button is the best example. Amazon currently has the patent on that button and defends it vigorously.
However, in 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that software couldn’t be patented, and so, two years later (the time it took to get all pending patents evaluated), all software patents stopped. Currently, software patents are not permitted, though some exist because of this window. Moreover, the Supreme Court left the question of software patents open. That is, the Supreme Court ruled that the issue of software patents was not finalized. The Court wanted to see how technology would evolve before making a ruling.
Theoretically, a startup could still file a patent for software and hope that the Supreme Court would rule differently in the near future and decide the open aspect of the current patent law. But, as stated before, a startup has limited resources. A Start-up can’t spend those limited resources on expensive patents that are long-shots at best. Instead, we need to find other ways to help protect IP including trademarks, trade secrets, and copyrights. Again, those other aspects of IP will be analyzed in a legal sense and a strategic business sense to give Invisible Industries the best recommendation.
CELect team: James Bierman, MBA’16; Prateek Gupta, Engineering; Kevin Jacobsen, Law; Max Suiter, Fine Arts
