Masnick: Startups prioritizing early patent downside protection are making a mistake
Mike Masnick · a16z Podcast | A Whirlwind Tour of Policy Issues in Tech · Jan 2, 2019 · at 23:47
Mike Masnick, founder of Techdirt, discusses early-stage startup priorities, arguing entrepreneurs should focus on audience and network effects rather than patent prosecution.
0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The only thing that patents really do is protect you on the downside. And if you're protecting on the downside at the beginning, you've, again, I think you've just done something wrong.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Mike Masnick
Masnick: Having no patent system would be better than the current system
“I might feel pretty strongly that no patent system would probably be better than the patent system that we have today.”
China reduced prison sentences for inmates who filed patents
“China was incentivizing people in their prisons that they would give them shorter prison sentences if they were able to file patents.”
Masnick: Adopting traditional corporate lobbying would mark a tech industry failure
“I think, you know, one of the things, you know, if it turns out that the tech industry, that the answer for them on policy questions is to build up a giant lobbying system, Set up an apparatus in the nature of like the telcos and the pharmaceuticals and a numb…”