For startups in the early stages of development, securing a patent can be an easy thing to put off or forgo altogether. In the legal technology community, however, getting proprietary technology patented is perhaps not such a bad idea, especially where software development is concerned.
Ryan Alshak, founder of timekeeping software Ping, filed a preliminary patent application about nine months ago to begin the patent application process. He and the Ping team decided to move forward on the application primarily as a legal defense mechanism for his technology.
