Fatih Ozluturk is a prolific inventor, with 186 issued patents and 181 pending patent applications. His inventions have been licensed to every major cellular company, and have generated over $1 billion in licensing revenue. Today, Ozluturk is a Principal of the Soryn IP Group, and also Director of Patent Strategy at Liquid Patent Consulting. He is also an entrepreneur and an angel investor, he teaches workshops in the NYC startup community, and he is the author of the book “Patents. Simplified.”
I spoke with Ozluturk on the record in a lengthy interview that really should be required reading for anyone who is contemplating starting a software-based tech company. We discussed the importance of at least filing a provisional patent application even if you are not sure you want to get a patent, and we also talked about how easy it is to write software but how extremely difficult it is to write useful software.
If you are interested in reading the entire interview, you can start here. What follows are highlights from our discussion.
On the importance of filing a provisional patent application, Ozluturk likens provisional patent applications to chicken soup — good for everyone.
OZLUTURK: Patent protection is not as effective for every technology. However, I do advise most companies to file at least for provisional patent protection. By filing provisional patent applications, they have a filing date preserved while they continue to raise money, build their technology, and assess the future value of what they’re building. So I would say provisional patents are like chicken soup. It is good for everybody. Even a startup with strained resources can afford to file provisional applications. As a result of the American Invents Act and the fact that the United States is now a first-inventor-to-file country, it is advisable for any company to file provisional applications as soon as they have a meaningful invention and have the ability to put it down in an application and file it.
Filing a provisional patent application also sets start-ups apart. According to Ozluturk, it suggests they are moving forward in a responsible way.
OZLUTURK: I’ve invested in New York City accelerators as well as in individual companies as an angel investor. When I look at a company and see that the founders took the time to file patent applications, whether I believe that the patents will issue or not, it indicates to me that this is a group of entrepreneurs that understand their technology, they take it seriously, they run their business as a serious enterprise. They protect their intellectual assets. They’re seeing it as something more serious than just a weekend project. So it indicates to me a certain level of seriousness and attention to what they’re creating. And it indicates to me a certain level of pride in what they’re creating. This is regardless of whether their patents eventually issue or not. To me, making the effort and filing a provision application always reflects well on the company.
Simply throwing together code without stepping back and considering the project from an engineering standpoint, a human standpoint, is one of the biggest mistakes start-ups make. They think they don’t have time to create a project document or think through the system. But that is a mistake, according to Ozluturk.
OZLUTURK: I see hundreds of companies every year that come and go. I can assure everyone that no matter how good the idea is if it’s slapped together poorly, if it is bad software, it just won’t work, it won’t get funded, it won’t grow, it’s not going to be successful. If you want your code to turn into a commercial product, you need to follow good coding practices. There is nothing that replaces good software engineering. And if you’re doing the things that you need to do as a good developer, whether software or otherwise, then you always generate the information that you need for the patent application. If you think about building a hardware product, you would never go to a manufacturing outfit and ask them to build you something without having board layouts or specs or some sort of a schematic, right?
For more, please see an article penned by Ozluturk titled The Cost of Not Having Patent Protection.
Tags: Fatih Ozluturk, investors, patent, patents, provisional patent application, provisional patent applications, software patent, software patents, startups
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