Even for a tiny startup, a good patent on your core technology, service or distribution method can give you an amazing competitive advantage. Startup company valuations are often based primarily on the value of the intellectual property that protects the key technology or business method. See U.S. Patent No. MORE >>

It doesn’t prove your business model of pricing, distribution, and support. Register some intellectual property. Intellectual property is a large element of most early-stage company valuations, and this value determines what percent of the company an investor will expect to get for his money. Sell one. MORE >>

Building a product doesn’t get it distributed and sold. Pre-existing intellectual property. Ideas are not intellectual property, until they have been converted into patents, trade secrets, trademarks, or copyrights. In the real world, the "idea" is a very small part of the overall equation. Funding. MORE >>

3)  If I have a license to the software, d o I have an unrestricted right to make derivative works, copy, sublicense and distribute the software without the same open source license attached ? Jill Hubbard Bowman is an IP lawyer who helps emerging growth companies increase their value through the use of intellectual property MORE >>

And some developers through OSS licenses use copyright and contract law to control licensing terms, downstream distribution and availability of the source code. Some licenses like the GNU GPL , the most commonly used type of OSS license, have flow down provisions that require the source code to be open to all when distributed to others. MORE >>