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Ask HN: Startup built on idea-kernel developed at former employer
I worked starting 2000 January at a startup in the San Jose area and stayed with the company for 1.5 years approx (i.e., through the dot-com bust/mini-recovery/bust). While I was there we came up with some interesting ideas (I came up with and refined a large portion of these ideas) and filed for 10 patents in 2001. I did a large portion of the patent disclosure work.
Long-story short (I will post further about the situation in further comment below) ...
* patents filed were never fully pursued by acquiring
company, and all lapsed in 2007 or before
* patent appications have huge value and adequately
describe a beautiful monetizable system -- and due
to lapsed patents, while one could not prevent others
from implementing the same, others cannot successfully
sue a new startup for developing these ideas since
there is fully documented prior art
More details in a further comment ...