When you’re building something new—especially at startup speed—the last thing you want is legal paperwork slowing you down. But when it comes to patents, there’s one thing you can’t ignore: the Information Disclosure Statement, or IDS. It sounds boring, and honestly, it kind of is. But it’s also one of the most important steps in filing a strong, defensible patent.
What Is an IDS—and Why Should You Care?
The Purpose of an IDS Is Simple: Transparency
An Information Disclosure Statement, or IDS, is a document submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during the patent process.
Its purpose is simple: tell the patent examiner about anything you know that might be relevant to whether your invention should get a patent.
That includes other patents, academic papers, public disclosures, or anything similar that someone else has created. It’s about being honest and open. The government wants to see that you’re playing fair.
If that sounds like extra paperwork, you’re not wrong. But it’s not just a formality. The IDS is a legal obligation. The USPTO expects you to hand over anything material to the patentability of your invention.
The consequences for forgetting or withholding something can be serious—sometimes fatal to your patent.
Why Founders and Teams Often Overlook This Step
For busy product teams, the IDS feels like a background task. It doesn’t move the product forward. It doesn’t feel urgent. And it’s not always clear what counts as “material.”
That’s why it’s often rushed or skipped until the last minute. But that’s risky.
When you don’t prioritize your IDS, you’re taking a gamble. If something relevant comes out later—and it wasn’t disclosed—you might face legal trouble. Worse, your patent might get invalidated.
That means months or even years of protection can vanish because of a missed document.
Think of the IDS as Part of Your Product’s Safety Net
You’re not filing an IDS to please the government. You’re filing it to protect what you’re building.
Just like you’d lock down your codebase or secure your AWS keys, you want your IP to be buttoned up. An IDS is part of that armor. It doesn’t just help you get the patent. It makes that patent harder to challenge later.
If an investor or acquirer is doing diligence and they see gaps or mistakes in your IDS filings, it can spook them. On the other hand, a clean and complete IDS gives them confidence.
It tells them your IP is real, valid, and taken seriously. That’s a strategic advantage.
What Actually Needs to Be Disclosed
Here’s where things get murky. Not every team knows what qualifies as prior art. And that’s where many go wrong.
If you or anyone on your team knows about a similar invention, or if you’ve read research papers that touch on the same idea, those need to be shared.
So do foreign patent filings, references cited in related patents, or even something you saw in a pitch deck two years ago.
If it might matter to whether your idea is truly new, it should go in the IDS.
What’s tricky is that this isn’t just a one-time event. You have a continuing duty to disclose relevant material throughout the patent process.
So if you come across new references after your first IDS, you’re expected to file another.
The Best Time to Start Thinking About IDS
It’s not after you finish writing your patent. It’s not when your attorney asks you for documents. It’s the moment you decide to protect your invention.
Right from the start, you should be tracking what prior art you’ve seen, what similar ideas are out there, and what’s been shared internally or externally.
This is especially true if you’re reading up on related technology while building your solution. If you’re ingesting technical content, you should be documenting that as potential disclosure material.
That doesn’t mean becoming a lawyer. It just means building simple habits like saving links or noting key documents in your project tracking tools. Later, when it’s time to file, you’re not scrambling.
Who’s Responsible for Filing an IDS?
Here’s where it gets real. It’s not just your lawyer’s job. If you’re the founder or inventor, you share the legal duty to disclose. So do others on the team who worked on the idea.
That includes engineers, researchers, and even product managers—anyone who was part of the development and knew about related work.
That’s why it’s smart to bake this into your process. If you’re regularly filing patents, create a quick way for team members to flag or upload references as they come across them.
Don’t wait until the end of a filing cycle to try to remember what you saw six months ago.
Why You Can’t Treat the IDS Like a One-Off Task
Filing a single IDS for a patent might seem like checking a box. But if you’re serious about protecting multiple inventions, you need a system, not a one-off fix.
That’s because references can apply to more than one patent. The same prior art might need to be disclosed in three different applications. And it’s easy to lose track if you’re doing this manually.
Worse, if one application cites a reference but a related one doesn’t, and it turns out that reference was critical, your patent could be at risk.
You need to treat the IDS like a living part of your IP process. Not a static form.
How to Build a Low-Lift, High-Impact IDS Process
Start by making it easy for your team to capture relevant documents. That could be a shared folder, a Notion page, or a tagging system in your knowledge base. What matters is that it’s simple and visible.
You don’t need a complex database—you need a place where people drop in useful stuff.
Next, make sure someone owns the process. It could be your legal lead, your ops person, or even a founder. But someone needs to regularly review new disclosures and align them with what’s being filed.
Finally, integrate the IDS step into your patent workflow. Don’t treat it as an afterthought. Make it a standard step between invention capture and filing. That way, no one forgets, and nothing slips through the cracks.
The Hidden ROI of Doing This Right
Most teams think of IDS as compliance work. But there’s real ROI in doing it well. Clean filings reduce risk.
They also increase your IP’s value. If you ever sell or license your patents, buyers will care deeply about the quality of your disclosures.
Also, when you streamline the IDS process, your attorneys spend less time chasing documents. That saves money. It also shortens the timeline between invention and filed patent, which keeps your roadmap moving.
And if you’re using a smart system like PowerPatent, you get all of this baked in—clear tracking, automated reminders, and human oversight so nothing gets missed.
The Real Risks of Getting IDS Wrong
It’s Not Just a Minor Mistake—It Can Break Your Patent
For a lot of startups, the IDS feels like small stuff. A technicality. Something your lawyer can “just handle.” But that thinking is dangerous.
Because the moment you get it wrong, you open the door to something called inequitable conduct—which basically means a court can throw out your entire patent if they believe you weren’t honest or complete in what you disclosed.
This isn’t rare. It’s happened in real cases. Courts have invalidated patents worth millions because of a missed reference or a sloppy filing.
Even if it’s not on purpose, even if you just forgot—once that door is open, the damage is done. That’s how fragile a patent can be when the IDS process is ignored or rushed.
What Happens If You Forget to File or Miss a Reference
Say you find out after your patent is granted that there was a research paper you didn’t include. Or maybe you saw a competing product years ago but never logged it.
If that information was important and you knew about it, your patent can be challenged—even years later. If the challenge sticks, you lose your rights completely.
Now imagine you’re in a funding round. Or in an M&A conversation. Or in a licensing deal. And the other party does diligence. They spot the missing reference and realize your patent might not hold up.
The deal stalls—or disappears. All because the IDS wasn’t handled with care.
That’s why this isn’t just about being “technically correct.” It’s about protecting the value of your work. You’re not filing patents just to get nice-looking certificates.
You’re filing to create real, enforceable rights. The IDS is part of what makes those rights solid.
Why the Risks Multiply as You Scale
The bigger your team, the more inventions you file. The more filings you have, the more references you’re tracking. And the more prior art you’ve seen. It adds up fast.
When you only have one patent application, it might seem manageable. But once you’re managing 5 or 10 or 20, the cross-referencing becomes intense. One missed connection and you’re exposed.
And the truth is, most law firms aren’t equipped to handle this at scale without charging you a fortune.
They’ll ask for documents each time, but they’re not building a shared, centralized memory across your portfolio. That’s why founders need to own the system. It’s your IP. Your risk. And your reputation.
Missed IDS Steps Are a Red Flag in Due Diligence
If you’re planning to raise money, sell your company, or enter strategic partnerships, your patent portfolio will be scrutinized.
Investors and acquirers don’t just look at how many patents you have—they look at how defensible those patents are.
A sloppy IDS is a red flag. It says, “We didn’t really take this seriously.” And that makes people nervous. Even if you never go to court, the perception of risk can lower the value of your IP or delay important deals.
But the opposite is also true. A well-organized IDS process builds trust. It says, “We’ve got our house in order.” That makes you a safer bet, and a more attractive partner.
It’s Easy to Overlook the Little Things That Cause Big Problems
Let’s say your engineer reads a few articles while building your system. They share one in Slack. Another shows up in a team email. Someone links to a patent in a slide deck. It all feels like normal team activity. And it is.
But every one of those moments is a potential disclosure. And if it’s not logged, if it’s not included, and someone questions it later—you’re on the hook.
That’s the reality of “duty to disclose.” It’s not about legalese. It’s about documentation and habits.
That’s why the real risk isn’t just forgetting. It’s assuming you’re covered when you’re not.
Attorneys Can’t Fix What They Don’t Know
Even if you’re working with a great patent attorney, they can only include what you give them. If you don’t share the right references, they can’t magically find them.
And if your team doesn’t know what counts, they might not even mention it.
This is why a clear internal process matters. You can’t outsource responsibility for the IDS. You can delegate tasks, yes—but you still need a system that ensures nothing gets dropped.
Your legal partner can help execute. But they can’t see inside your Slack channels or project tools. That’s up to you.
Doing the Bare Minimum Is the Most Expensive Option
Some startups try to keep it simple by only disclosing the bare minimum—usually just the citations from a patent search. But that approach is shortsighted.
Why? Because it often ignores the most dangerous references: the ones your team saw, discussed, or considered directly. That’s the stuff that creates real risk later.
When you ignore it, you create a paper trail that can be used against you in litigation.
It’s smarter to take a proactive approach. Not just because it’s the right thing to do—but because it makes your entire IP strategy stronger.
You’re showing that your team operates with integrity, that your process is tight, and that your patents are built to last.
A Strong IDS Process Saves Time, Money, and Headaches Later
It might feel like extra effort now, but a clean IDS strategy pays off in big ways. You reduce the time your legal team spends chasing down documents. You avoid late fees and costly amendments.
You speed up the entire patent process. And you sleep better knowing your filings are rock solid.
The best part? With modern tools like PowerPatent, you don’t have to build that system from scratch. The software helps you automate the capture, tracking, and filing of IDS data—without the usual mess.
It’s how busy teams stay compliant without losing focus. And it’s how smart startups avoid the costly pitfalls of manual IP management.
What Busy Teams Usually Miss (And How to Fix It)
The Biggest Mistakes Don’t Come From Bad Intentions
Most startups don’t mess up the IDS because they’re cutting corners on purpose. They mess it up because they’re moving fast, juggling ten priorities, and no one’s quite sure who’s in charge of what.
You’ve got engineers writing code, product leads iterating on features, and maybe—just maybe—someone looping in a law firm once things start to feel “big enough” to protect.
In the middle of all that, tiny things fall through the cracks. The references that someone skimmed.
The academic papers mentioned in a meeting. The patent someone flagged in a Slack thread months ago. These are the small signals that often get ignored. But when left out of the IDS, they can become big problems.
It’s Not About Remembering—It’s About Capturing in Real Time
The truth is, no one remembers everything they’ve read or seen while building a product. And that’s fine. You shouldn’t have to rely on memory.
What teams need is a lightweight way to capture these moments as they happen. Not a massive database. Not a legal-grade document tracker. Just something simple.
Something that says, “Hey, I came across this paper—it might be relevant later.” That’s enough to protect your future self.
The smartest teams treat this like bug tracking. You don’t wait for someone to remember a bug six months after it happened. You log it. Same here. You’re logging anything that might someday need to show up in an IDS.
Your Team Probably Doesn’t Know What Counts—Yet
One of the most common gaps is education. Your team might not know what a prior art reference looks like. Or that their casual research could be relevant to a patent filing.
That’s not their fault. Most engineers and product folks were never trained on this stuff.
So make it clear. Help them understand that if they’re reviewing related tech—even casually—it matters. If they’re reading white papers, watching demo videos, or analyzing competitors, that’s disclosure material.
If it feels “close” to what you’re building, it’s worth noting.
You don’t have to scare people with legal threats. Just make it part of the culture. “If you see something related, tag it.” Simple.
When Everyone Owns a Little, No One Drops the Ball
The most effective IDS strategies aren’t built on one person doing all the work. They’re built on shared awareness. Everyone on the team should know what an IDS is and how they can help support it—even in small ways.
When engineers are trained to log what they find, when PMs are aware of the process, and when your legal or ops lead knows how to track references properly, you get better coverage.
You don’t need a full-time patent manager—you just need clear signals and clear handoffs.
This is especially important in distributed teams, where async work and tools like Slack, Notion, and GitHub can hide important threads. Create a place for people to drop in related materials as they see them.
Even better, automate it with a tool that integrates into your flow.
Things Move Fast—Your IDS Process Should Too
Let’s say your team is prepping a patent filing next month. You’re busy shipping a new release. Someone flags a new competing feature from a major player.
You review it, talk about it, maybe even compare it to your current roadmap. That’s a relevant reference.
Now here’s the problem: if your IDS process can’t capture that discussion quickly, it gets forgotten. And by the time your attorney files the patent, that reference never makes it in.
It’s not that you were hiding it. It’s that your process wasn’t fast enough to keep up.
Modern patent workflows need to move at the speed of product. Not the speed of legal. That means fast capture, easy tagging, and real-time sync across tools.
PowerPatent was built for this exact use case. So you can file strong patents while building at full speed.
Overlapping Patents Multiply the Work If You’re Not Organized
Let’s say your company is working on a family of inventions. Maybe it’s variations on the same core tech. Or a series of improvements over time. You file five patents in a year.
A handful of references apply to all of them—but you’re only tracking disclosures per project.
Here’s what happens next: those overlapping references get missed. Maybe they make it into one filing but not the others. Or your team forgets which one included what. That’s a risk.
A better system centralizes your disclosures. It doesn’t matter which invention it came from—if it’s relevant, it gets tracked in one place.
Then, when your legal team goes to file the next patent, they can easily see what needs to be carried forward.
This kind of “portfolio memory” is hard to build manually. But with the right tools, it becomes automatic.
Founders Set the Tone—Even Without Legal Training
If you’re a founder or technical lead, you don’t need to know patent law. But you do set the tone for how seriously your company treats its IP.
If you treat the IDS as important, your team will follow. If you ignore it or delay it, the whole system starts to fall apart.
Make disclosure tracking a first-class citizen in your product and research workflows. Talk about it during roadmap reviews. Bake it into your engineering onboarding.
Connect it with the tools your team already uses. That’s how culture shifts—from the top.
A Few Minutes Now Can Save Months Later
Here’s the real cost of not having a strong IDS workflow: backtracking. When your attorney asks for prior art and you can’t find it, everything slows down.
When you miss something and need to file a correction, it adds weeks. When a reference gets discovered late, it might trigger extra filings or rework.
All of this eats into your timeline, your legal budget, and your focus.
But when you’ve been logging as you go—even casually—you avoid all of that. Your team doesn’t waste time digging through email threads. Your attorney doesn’t chase down missing links.
You file faster, with more confidence, and at less cost.
The Smarter Way to Handle IDS Without Losing Time
Don’t Wait for a Fire Drill—Build the Process Now
The worst time to figure out your IDS process is when your attorney is asking for it, and the filing deadline is in two days. That’s when panic sets in.
People are digging through Slack, searching for PDFs, and guessing what counts as prior art. It’s messy, stressful, and expensive.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you build your IDS workflow early—before the pressure hits—you’ll never scramble again.
And the key isn’t to build something heavy or complex. It’s to make it so simple that your team can follow it without thinking.
Think of it like brushing your teeth. It’s not hard. But if you forget to do it for a while, problems pile up fast. Same with disclosure tracking.
Start by Making It a Habit, Not a Project
One of the best things you can do is treat IDS tracking as an everyday habit, not a “legal task.” That way, it doesn’t feel like extra work. It just becomes part of how your team thinks and builds.
For example, when someone on your team drops a link to a competitor’s product in Slack, they can just tag it with “#prior-art” or forward it to a shared inbox. That small action means your future self won’t be scrambling later.
The habit matters more than the format. You don’t need the perfect folder structure. You need a rhythm. A culture of catching and logging things when they show up.
Build a Lightweight Flow That Mirrors How You Already Work
The smartest IDS workflows don’t reinvent how your team works—they tap into it. If you use Slack, Notion, Jira, or even Google Drive, there’s a way to track disclosures that fits naturally into those tools.
Let’s say your team uses Notion to track projects. Just add a field for “prior art seen” or “related work reviewed.” Now when someone documents their research, they drop in links or notes.
When it’s time to file, your legal team has a clean record to pull from.
This doesn’t require changing how people work. It’s about adding a little structure to what they’re already doing. Make the process fit the team—not the other way around.
Your Legal Team Should Plug Into Your Flow, Not Slow It Down
A lot of startups assume their attorney will handle the IDS. And yes, a good attorney will prepare and file it. But they can’t capture what they don’t see.
That’s why your legal partner needs access to your disclosure system.
Whether that’s a shared doc, a project board, or a dedicated tool like PowerPatent, they should be able to pull what they need without constant back-and-forth.
This isn’t just about convenience—it’s about quality. When your legal team sees everything, they can do a better job protecting your work. They can catch things you missed, make better arguments, and file stronger patents.
Stop Copy-Pasting References Between Applications
If you’ve filed more than one patent, you’ve probably faced this: finding the same references again and again. Copying citations from one draft to the next. Hoping nothing gets missed.
It’s a pain—and it’s risky.
A smarter way is to build a centralized reference library. A single source of truth that tracks every disclosure your team has seen, with tags for which patents it’s been used in.
That way, when you’re prepping a new filing, you just select the relevant ones. No duplication. No missed connections.
This kind of system saves hours of manual work. But more importantly, it makes your entire patent strategy stronger. Because every filing builds on the last, without gaps.
Automate the Admin So Your Team Can Focus on Building
No one wants to spend hours tracking references or formatting IDS forms. That’s not where your time should go.
That’s why automation is key.
Tools like PowerPatent let you upload references once, then reuse them across multiple filings. The system keeps track of what’s been disclosed, where, and when.
It also reminds you when new disclosures are due or when deadlines are coming up.
This kind of automation isn’t just nice to have. It’s how busy teams stay compliant without slowing down. It frees up your team to focus on what really matters—building your product.
Make It Easy for Everyone to Contribute
Sometimes, disclosure tracking falls apart because it’s too hard to participate. Engineers don’t know where to log things. PMs aren’t sure what counts. Legal doesn’t know what’s missing.
So make it dead simple.
Set up a single drop zone—an email address, a shared form, a Slack channel. Give your team one easy place to send anything that might be relevant. Don’t worry about perfect formatting. Just focus on catching the signal.
Then, have someone (or a system) review the items later and decide what makes it into the IDS. The goal is to reduce friction. The fewer steps people have to take, the more likely they’ll actually do it.
You Don’t Need Legal Training to Run This Well
This is where a lot of teams get stuck. They assume that because IDS sounds legal, it needs to be handled by lawyers.
Not true.
You can set up 80% of a smart IDS workflow without touching legal documents. You’re just organizing what your team already knows. What they’ve seen.
What they’ve shared. Then your legal partner takes that input and turns it into the formal filing.
The system isn’t about law—it’s about knowledge capture. If your team is good at shipping fast, you already have the skills to run this well.
How PowerPatent Makes IDS Effortless and Error-Proof
Built for Founders Who Move Fast
PowerPatent wasn’t made for big legal teams or slow-moving enterprises. It was built for startups.
For technical founders, busy engineers, and lean teams who are shipping fast and need to protect what they’re building—without getting bogged down in legal admin.
The IDS process is one of the places where things usually break. Not because people don’t care—but because it’s just not built into the way startups work. That’s exactly what PowerPatent fixes.
It turns the IDS into something you don’t have to stress over. Something that runs quietly in the background, keeping your patent filings clean, strong, and defensible—without pulling your team off product work.
Smart Software That Tracks What Matters Automatically
PowerPatent helps you collect, organize, and track prior art as your team builds.
The system makes it incredibly easy to capture references the moment they come up—whether someone sees a competitor’s product, reads a paper, or flags a related patent.
Instead of asking your team to remember what they saw months ago, PowerPatent builds a living timeline of what’s been viewed, shared, or discussed.
And when it’s time to file, it automatically prepares the right disclosures for each patent.
You don’t need to think about formatting. You don’t need to remember which references go with which application. It’s all there—clean, organized, and ready.
Seamless Integration With How Your Team Already Works
This isn’t another clunky legal platform that lives in its own world. PowerPatent connects to the tools your team already uses—Slack, email, Notion, Google Drive, and more.
So when someone shares something relevant, it’s captured without them needing to jump through hoops.
Let’s say your engineer posts a link to a research paper in Slack. With PowerPatent, that link can be logged with a click. No need to copy it somewhere else.
No need to chase it down later. It’s already part of your record.
This kind of seamless tracking is what makes the system truly founder-friendly. It’s not about teaching your team how to “be legal.” It’s about making legal fit into how your team works.
Attorney Oversight, Without Attorney Delays
One of the biggest risks in IDS management is human error—either missing a reference, filing it late, or applying it to the wrong application.
That’s why PowerPatent doesn’t just rely on automation. Every filing is backed by real attorney oversight.
When you’re ready to file, a registered patent attorney reviews the IDS for completeness, accuracy, and risk. You get the peace of mind that comes with expert review—without the back-and-forth or expensive hourly fees.
This hybrid model (smart software + real humans) is what makes PowerPatent unique. It gives you speed without sacrificing confidence.
Never Miss a Deadline, Never Miss a Reference
The PowerPatent dashboard shows you exactly where each filing stands, what references have been disclosed, and what’s coming up next.
You get gentle reminders when deadlines are near, and alerts when new disclosures are needed.
It also prevents duplication and missed connections across your patent portfolio. If a reference is relevant to multiple filings, it gets tracked once and applied everywhere it’s needed.
This level of visibility is something most startups don’t even realize they’re missing—until it’s too late. PowerPatent brings clarity to a part of the process that’s usually murky.
Designed to Scale With You
Today you might be filing one or two patents. Next year, it might be ten. PowerPatent was built to grow with your IP portfolio. It doesn’t get harder as you scale—because the system remembers everything for you.
It builds a living library of disclosures, citations, and references. So when you revisit older inventions, extend your patents, or explore spin-off ideas, everything you need is right there.
No more digging through email threads. No more “Where did we put that PDF?” Just fast, clean, repeatable filings—at every stage.
You Stay in Control—Without Doing the Heavy Lifting
Some platforms take over the process and keep you in the dark. PowerPatent is the opposite. It keeps you fully in control, while doing the boring work in the background.
You can see what’s been captured. You can add or remove references. You can review filings before they go out. But you don’t have to handle the formatting, paperwork, or legal nuances.
It’s like having a patent-savvy project manager on your team—one who never sleeps, never forgets, and always follows up.
The Real Payoff: Stronger Patents, Faster
In the end, the goal isn’t just to file more patents. It’s to file better patents—faster. Patents that hold up in court. Patents that boost your valuation.
Patents that make your company more defensible, more fundable, and more valuable.
By handling IDS the smart way, you’re removing one of the most common failure points in the patent process. You’re making sure nothing gets missed.
You’re building trust with investors and acquirers. And you’re doing it without slowing down.
That’s what PowerPatent unlocks.
Wrapping It Up
The IDS shouldn’t be the thing that derails your patent. It shouldn’t be a scramble at the last minute. It shouldn’t be a foggy process no one wants to own. And with the right system, it doesn’t have to be.
Startups win when they move fast, stay sharp, and build with clarity. Your IP strategy should do the same. That means treating the IDS like part of your product stack—not a pile of paperwork. When you build a simple, reliable workflow around it, everything gets easier. You file with confidence. You protect your inventions. And you do it without slowing your team down.
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