"How do I patent my product so nobody copies it?"
I've gotten this question a few times this month. Always from accomplished people with real careers and deep expertise, building software for the first time.
The short answer is you probably can't, and it probably wouldn't help. Alice v. CLS Bank (2014) killed the idea that you can patent "your idea on a computer." If you assembled your product from AI coding agents and big thoughts, there's likely nothing novel enough to file on.
But the deeper answer is the one I actually want to give, because what's common sense inside our little bubble isn't intuitive anywhere outside it.
Software Is Not a Thing You Build. It's a Thing You Feed.
A patent protects an artifact. In software, artifacts are short-lived.
Code rots even when you don't touch it. You don't have to change a thing for it to break. Upstream dependencies change. Certificates expire. API versions sunset. Software isn't a machine you build and walk away from; it's a garden you water or it dies. Sometimes far more spectacularly and expensively than you'd imagine.
The build is the cheap part. Most of what software costs, you spend after launch. Marketing. Distribution. Customer support. Security patching. Every feature you ship is a promise you now have to keep. Even shutting it down costs more than you expect - you have to migrate everyone off first.
Nothing in production is temporary. That "I'll ship it now and fix it later" decision will become the cornerstone of the house of cards. You can change it fast with a coding agent later, sure - and break 99 other things, and lose your night. Thoughtful architecture goes a long way.
Nobody Understands the Whole System
Nobody understands the whole system. You'll have many users, with many needs, so you'll build many features. Some will be "temporary." "Experimental." "Just this once." In time you won't remember why a thing exists, what it connects to, or why it works that way. Write documentation, because you-in-five-years will be very frustrated with you-right-now. This compounds with every additional person touching the codebase.
Legacy code is a term of contempt for software successful enough to still be running. Languages most people under 60 have never heard of are clearing your paycheck this weekend. You'll depend on things you can't live without, written in ways you can't stand. Embrace it. Legacy code isn't going anywhere.
Most of your product is other people's code. In 2016, a trademark complaint over a package name led a developer to delete eleven lines of code, and all kinds of software broke across the internet. Every problem in every package you depend on is now your problem. Every vulnerability in them is now yours. If you're handling sensitive data - and almost all customer data is sensitive - this should keep you up at night.
The Ground Moves, and You'll Pay for It
The ground moves, and you'll pay for it. Every few years the industry changes its mind about the right way to build things. Sometimes it's a genuinely better idea. More often it's money - interest rates move, or investors want a different revenue shape, and suddenly everyone's product has to work a different way. You can get everything 100% right today and you'll still have to rebuild it in 3-5 years anyway. Conserve enough cash for your inevitable rebuild or be prepared to sunset when the pendulum swings.
What actually holds: Copyright is automatic on your code. Trademark your name; that one's worth the $350. Trade secrets are free and last forever, so don't publish your edge. Get IP assignment agreements signed by every contractor and cofounder - more deals get complicated by a missing assignment than by anyone getting copied.
AI collapsed the cost of creating software. It did nothing to the cost of owning it.
Your moat is distribution, the data you accumulate, and the fact that when something breaks at 11pm, somebody picks up.
Those compound. Code only decays.
Welcome to software.