Robotics startups should use AI to cut patent costs by up to 70%

The piece advises founders to focus on protecting one or two "crown jewel" inventions that are central to the robot's function, while keeping other processes secret if they are hard to reverse-engineer. It warns against trying to patent every component, which wastes engineering time and resources. Instead, a layered approach using a few core patents and a wider defensive ring is recommended to make design-arounds expensive for competitors.

To address the high cost of patenting, where a single European application can cost €13,000 to €18,000, the author suggests using AI to handle documentation and drafting. This approach can make filing up to 70% faster and reduce costs, allowing attorneys to focus on judgment calls. The goal is to make quality IP protection affordable for seed-stage founders so they can protect their core innovations without diverting scarce resources from product development.