Ask HN: How are early-stage AI startups thinking about IP protection?

Hi HN,

I’m researching how early-stage AI and health-tech startups think about protecting their innovations.

Traditional patents are expensive, slow and often misaligned with how fast AI products evolve. I’m curious:

Are founders filing patents early? Are you relying on trade secrets? Publishing defensively? Not worrying about IP at all? Waiting until revenue?

We’re collecting responses through a short 60-second survey to better understand real-world behavior:

https://forms.gle/8UAytkGNfge4GKrH8

If you’d rather just comment here, that’s equally helpful.

I’m happy to share aggregated insights back with the community.

Thanks, Shaheen

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nitin_flanker 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It highly depends on the industry but in health-tech, startups still opt for patent protection, simply because it works. For anything that is not suitable for patents, many founders opt for trade secret (as patents are open to everyone and can be used by competition to figure out how you're doing what you're doing).

Another strategy that I have seen experienced founder following is keeping their patent under examination for longer. They either respond late to the examiner's questions, purposefully opt for GAUs (Group art units. Different GAU reviews different tech patents) where the prosecution timeline is slower. This gives them extra time to keep their innovations hidden while still protected, until they are ready to enter market with viable products.

For AI based, software patents are a tricky game with many getting rejected under Alice 101 rejections. The drafting and prosecution methods also change a lot when dealing with software patents about AI.

I can share more in-detail if you have any specific question.

Context: I am not a founder but I work in a Patent and technology consultation company and we regularly help with prior art searching, patent monetization, and large scale patent analysis on industry.

I have talked to about 200 early stage founders last year through conferences or in-person interviews and talked specifically about this topic.

	▲	shaheeniquebal 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for this. Super helpful perspective. The point about health-tech still leaning on patents because “it works” is interesting. From your conversations with early-stage founders, did you notice whether that confidence comes from actual enforcement experience, or more from investor expectation and signaling value? The GAU strategy you mentioned is also fascinating. Intentionally slowing prosecution to stay under examination longer. In practice, do founders see that as a strategic delay tactic, or is it mostly attorney-driven? And on AI/software patents given how common 101 rejections are post-Alice, do you feel early-stage teams still see patents as worth the cost and uncertainty? Or are they filing more for positioning than enforceability? Really appreciate you sharing your experience would love to understand where you think the biggest blind spots are for early-stage teams.