Author: Aindrila Mitra

Keeping your patents alive should feel clear and in your control. But when renewal time comes around, most founders see a wave of fees, deadlines, and country choices that all feel urgent and expensive at the same time. It’s hard to know which patents are worth keeping, which ones to let go, and how to…

Most founders don’t think about litigation risk until it’s already too late. You’re busy building, shipping, hiring, raising, and trying to keep the whole machine moving. The last thing you want to worry about is someone coming after your product, your tech, or your business. But here’s the truth no one really says out loud:…

Every founder faces the same moment. You’re building fast, your product is shaping up, and then you spot a competitor inching into your space. Maybe they just launched a feature that looks a little too close to yours. Maybe they filed a patent. Maybe they raised a round and started talking loudly in the press.…

Most founders don’t think about this, but it quietly decides whether your patent actually protects anything: Are your patent claims still aligned with the product you’re building today? Startups move fast. Products evolve every week. Code shifts. Models get rebuilt. Features get added or killed overnight. But patents don’t update themselves. If your claims fall…

When a company buys another company, or when two teams sign a licensing deal, the patents don’t update themselves. Someone has to clean up the ownership records. Someone has to tell the patent office who owns what now. And if this step gets skipped, delayed, or done wrong, it can quietly damage the value of…

Fixing a patent after it’s granted sounds scary, but it shouldn’t be. Every founder, engineer, and inventor makes mistakes. Sometimes it’s a typo. Sometimes it’s a small detail that slipped through while you were racing to build your product. Sometimes the patent office makes an error on their end. And sometimes, after you finally get…

Here’s the simple truth most founders never hear: when your patent gets allowed, you’re not done. Not even close. The world keeps moving, new prior art keeps popping up, and the rules around what you must share with the USPTO don’t magically disappear just because your patent crossed the finish line. Many inventors think the…

Family mapping sounds like a quiet background task you can ignore until later. But it’s actually one of the most important steps when you’re dealing with patent protection. If you don’t map your patent family the right way, you can accidentally pay twice for the same coverage. It happens more than you’d think. A founder…

Most founders don’t think about data hygiene when they think about patents. They think about protecting an idea, filing on time, maybe avoiding a competitor copying what they built. But the truth is simple: if your patent data is messy, slow, or wrong, the whole foundation of your IP becomes shaky. A tiny mistake in…

Most founders think the hardest part of patents is filing. But the real challenge shows up later—quietly, slowly, and usually at the worst possible time. It’s the long-term costs. The maintenance fees. The renewals. The annuities. The stuff nobody warns you about until you’re already deep in the process and trying to stretch every dollar.…