Babak Akhlaghi

IP strategy coach for startups & founders 🚀 | Turn inventions into leverage | Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at UMD | Articles & tips | Subscribe →

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

Procedural protection does not save a weak patent.
If your claims don't cover the core innovation competitors actually care about, none of this matters.
The advice was right for a decade. It isn't anymore.
Curious how many founders are still operating on pre-2025 assumptions.

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

The same advice echoed through the startup world for a decade.
Don't bother with patents.
They're too easy to invalidate.
The America Invents Act made that true.
The new EPR rule just made it false.

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

Licensing negotiations look different.
Companies that responded to enforcement threats with IPR/EPR filings now have to consider settling.
Investors are asking harder questions: What did you file. Why. What's the competitor landscape.

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

Here's what that does:

Blocks competitors from patenting the same idea. Prior art kills their application.
Costs almost nothing.
Reveals zero implementation detail.

The certificate may feel like protection but sometimes it is just a disclosure, a blueprint for competitors.

What IP strategy are you building for clients?

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

Founders come to patent attorneys believing they're building a moat.

Sometimes they're writing a manual for their competitors instead.

The day a patent publishes, every competitor knows exactly where to aim.

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

That's why defensive publication deserves consideration.

You publish a detailed description of your invention before anyone else patents it. No patent application. No public claims map.

Just a timestamped record that drops the idea into prior art.

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

Stop asking "Can I patent this?" Start asking "Should I patent this?" If the answer is no, don't file. Hire an engineer. Run more ads. Build your moat through execution.

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

Founders often invest heavily in patents believing they are buying protection. Sometimes that investment pays off. Other times, especially in fast‑moving markets, patents become slow, expensive assets that divert time and capital from what actually drives advantage: speed, network effects, or operational execution. The real question is not whether patents matter, but whether your IP strategy is aligned with how you win.

[Babak Akhlaghi @ThePatentCoach]

Real leverage looks like this: I once had a client with nothing but a portfolio we built strategically. Big players tried to crush them. We survived re-examination. That "paper" turned into over $100 MILLION licensing deals. That is the power of strategy.