Author: Aindrila Mitra

Every serious deal—fundraising, partnerships, licensing, M&A—quietly asks the same question: Can you actually use what you built without getting sued? That’s the heart of Freedom-to-Operate. And when a big moment is on the line, no founder wants slow answers, confusing legal speak, or last-minute surprises that tank momentum. You want clarity fast, you want risk…

Most founders don’t think about their patent portfolio until they have to. Maybe a new investor asks about it. Maybe a competitor starts getting close. Maybe a big customer wants proof that your tech is truly yours. And suddenly you’re staring at a stack of filings, old drafts, half-written ideas, and office actions you meant…

When investors look at your startup, they care about one thing even more than your product: who actually owns it. Not the brand. Not the website. The invention under the hood. The thing that makes your company worth funding. And this is where many founders get blindsided. Old contractor agreements. Missing IP assignments. Random open-source…

Open-source feels like magic when you’re building fast. You find a repo, drop it into your stack, ship something new in an hour, and move on. It’s a superpower for early teams because it removes friction and lets you build your product without reinventing the wheel. But the moment you step into a room with…

Most startups don’t lose their IP because someone steals it—they lose it because no one actually owns it. A founder thinks the code is automatically theirs, a contractor assumes they keep rights to whatever they touched, an employee signs an offer letter but never signs an IP assignment, and a co-founder walks away still holding…

When you build something new, you want to know it’s yours. Not just in your heart, but on paper. That’s what chain of title is all about. It’s the clean trail that shows who truly owns the rights to an invention, a piece of code, a model, a design, or any other IP inside your…

Building the perfect IP data room isn’t about fancy folders or complex tools. It’s about showing investors, partners, and future acquirers that you know what you’ve built, you own what you’ve built, and you can prove it fast. A strong IP data room does something even more important too: it gives you quiet confidence. It…

When a company is preparing for an IPO or getting ready to be acquired, everything suddenly becomes very real. Investors and buyers want to know what they’re actually buying, what risks might be hiding under the hood, and whether the technology is truly yours. And when they dig in, they almost always start with your…

Getting a patent granted should feel like crossing the finish line. But for most founders, it feels more like the start of a new race. You now have something real to protect, something investors care about, and something rivals will watch closely. The problem is that once the patent is granted, the costs do not…

Sometimes you look at an old patent or a piece of tech you worked so hard to protect, and you realize you’re not going to renew it. Maybe the market moved. Maybe your company changed direction. Maybe the idea was ahead of its time—or behind it. Whatever the reason, you’re now holding something valuable that…