It is common advice to put as much material as possible in your patent application.  This advice used to be brilliant and appropriate, but the laws changed 20 years ago and it is no longer good advice.

After Jerome Lemelson and the barcode reader patents, Congress changed the laws at the end of the 1990's so that every word in a patent application hurts you.

We look at the tradeoffs of the patent process and put a different spin on the best advice for anyone thinking of a patent - especially startup companies and their investors.