Jul 29, 2026John Cronin
The $3,000 Provisional Patent That Outlives a Failed Hardware Startup
For a hardware startup, a $3,000 provisional patent can be the only asset that survives failure. Compare K-Scale Labs and Rethink Robotics.
Perspectives on IP strategy, patent valuation, structured invention, and the evolving landscape of intellectual property from the team at ipCapital Group.
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Talk with Our TeamFor a hardware startup, a $3,000 provisional patent can be the only asset that survives failure. Compare K-Scale Labs and Rethink Robotics.
Tempus paid $1.5B for Personalis despite holding more patents than its target. IP due diligence in acquisitions is about positioning, not portfolio size.
AI can suggest possible routes around patent claims, but a credible invent-around still requires experienced claim analysis, structured human invention, and clear conception provenance.
Invent Anything with John Cronin
The AI race is moving beyond language models. Patent data shows the emerging battleground in world models, multimodal systems, and embodied intelligence.
Intellectual property is widely misunderstood. Most business leaders assume patents exist to enable lawsuits, when litigation is rarely the right move. The more useful question is how IP creates, sustains, and communicates business strength across strategic decisions.
China’s population explains much of its patent volume, but not all of it. Per-capita filing intensity, engineering scale, foreign families, and prior-art effects reveal the strategic signal Western patent teams should track.
Tesla, Waymo, and Cruise reveal the same lesson from different angles: autonomous-vehicle IP is shifting from capability claims to safety, validation, and human-interface strategy.
Neuromorphic computing promises a lower-energy path for AI. The patent landscape shows why the opportunity is real, crowded, and strategically urgent.
Everyone can name the AI drug discovery companies. DeepMind folded every known protein and put the structures online. Recursion and Insilico Medicine raised enormous rounds on the promise of AI-designed medicines.
AI coding agents are changing where software value lives. Patent data shows why companies may build more of their own internal apps, and where IP strategy has to move.
Policy, capital, and patents are remaking the semiconductor industry. The winners will own the manufacturing IP that transfers into domestic fabs.