Software Patents · Founder Strategy
For software founders who need to know, before the invoices start, what they actually invented, which country still lets them claim it, and whether filing is even the right call.
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By Kenneth M.F. McGrath · CIONAOD Inc. · Law verified 6 September 2026
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The Problem
Founders file a thin provisional patent application because an investor asked, describe the benefit instead of the mechanism, learn about grace periods from the wrong country, and discover after the demo that the slide was a disclosure. The patent office is not where those mistakes are made. They are made in the last few yards before the first meeting with counsel, and they are the yards this book teaches you to carry.
What You'll Walk Away With
Is this for you?
You are a CTO or engineering founder who knows exactly what your software does under the hood and has been told, vaguely, that software is hard to patent. You’ll get a method for separating the mechanism from the product, a causal ladder that turns it into the evidence examiners look for, and the vocabulary to hold your own in the eligibility conversation.
You are the founder facing investors, partners and a launch calendar, with a budget that cannot absorb a wasted filing. You’ll get a staged, go–reshape–stop budget with written decision gates, the disclosure discipline that protects the countries you haven’t lost yet, and the portfolio map that answers the investor’s real question.
You are the person founders bring this problem to, without a patent background of your own. You’ll get the six gates as a teaching framework, four jurisdictions explained side by side, and a thirty-day sprint you can run with any team before their next demo.
What's Inside
1. The Last Few Yards
2. Why “It’s New” Is Not Enough
3. The Six Patentability Gates
4. Finding the Technical Invention Inside the Product
5. Software, Abstract Ideas and Technical Effects
6. How Patent Examiners See Prior Art
7. Novelty Versus Inventive Step
8. Designing Evidence for Patentability
9. Building the Invention Dossier
10. Searching Like Someone Trying to Destroy Your Patent
11. Claim Architecture Without Pretending to Be a Lawyer
12. Canada’s Software-Patent System
13. The United States and the Alice Problem
14. The United Kingdom After Emotional Perception
15. Europe and the COMVIK Approach
16. Disclosure, Priority, Provisionals and the PCT
17. The Capital-Efficient Patent Strategy
18. Working Effectively With a Patent Agent
19. Patentability Is Not Freedom to Operate
20. Building a Portfolio That Serves the Business
21. When Not to Patent
22. The Patent End Zone System
23. The 30-Day Patent-Readiness Sprint
24. Crossing the Goal Line
Reader Reviews
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— CIONAOD Inc.
About the Author
Kenneth M.F. McGrath is the founder of CIONAOD Inc., a Canadian multimedia publisher, and the author of the Patent End Zone system. A former educator with a background in standards development, instructional design and web application development, he writes for founders who have to make expensive decisions with incomplete information. He is not a lawyer or a patent agent, and this book is built around getting you to one prepared.
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Questions
No. It teaches strategy, evidence and vocabulary so you arrive at a registered patent agent or attorney organized and stress-tested. It never scores your invention or promises patentability, and every legal chapter tells you exactly what to ask counsel.
Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Patent Office each get their own chapter, plus a chapter on disclosure, priority and the PCT. Grace periods, provisional filings and eligibility tests are kept separate by jurisdiction, because they differ.
Every statute, office notice and deadline was verified against primary sources on 6 September 2026, including the UK Supreme Court’s February 2026 decision, Canada’s March 2026 practice notice and the 2025–2026 USPTO eligibility memoranda. Each chapter states its retrieval date and flags what to recheck.
Yes. Every concept is stated in plain English first, then the legal term. Six fictional founders carry the same problems through the book, and each chapter ends with a Field Position summary, a founder exercise and the questions to bring to counsel.
Yes, and the book says so in every chapter. What it changes is what you bring to that meeting: a disclosure register, an invention dossier, an adversarial prior-art search, claim families and a six-gate scorecard, so you buy judgement instead of extraction.
Yes. Enter your email above and Chapter 1, “The Last Few Yards,” is sent to you free.