Building our portfolio of startups using AI with seed investment in Legit Patents
We are thrilled to announce our seed investment in Legit Patents – the US based start-up that’s out to streamline the patent process for inventors using AI and intuitive design.
A one-stop-shop for inventors to file patent applications without the need for hours of prohibitively expensive attorney fees, Legit Patents allows founders to protect their ideas quickly, strategically and painlessly. Inventors are able to interact with software in a direct and secure manner before it’s passed on to a patent attorney to edit and review a final version before submission.
As with many startups, Legit Patents was created as a solution for a problem the founding team of trained lawyers faced themselves. “We came up against a problem that’s common for anyone starting a business: we invented something we thought was cool and we weren’t sure how best to protect it,” said Matthew Osman, CEO and co-founder of Legit Patents. “We asked several law firms about filing a patent and received quotes ranging from 5-15% of our bank balance at the time. We decided there had to be a better way.”
Half the time, filing a provisional patent application is spent teaching an attorney about your invention and founders are forced to pay to educate an ‘expert’ about the state of art in their field. For Legit Patents, the realization was that the expert in the process is not the attorney but the inventor.
“We decided to build an AI-powered environment that allowed an inventor with no prior legal knowledge to draft the majority of a patent application themselves. This leads to stronger, more valuable patent applications, which you don’t have to break the bank to file, delivered in a fraction of the current time.”
“After months of testing and working with clients in the US, we are delighted to receive backing from Seedcamp; their mission of empowering visionaries and builders of companies is exactly the same as ours. We look forward to working with them and their unparalleled network of innovators both in the US and in Europe. Through this partnership, we aim to encourage invention by reimagining the way that creators, from solo inventors all the way up to R&D labs, protect their ideas.”
Tom Wilson, investment manager at Seedcamp, added, “We see huge potential in Legit Patent’s approach of combining their powerful AI with human input to simplify and automate the largely manual and often painful patent process. Their product will free founders up to focus more of their time and effort on executing on their innovative ideas rather than spending excessive time teaching lawyers about their invention. Furthermore, largely automating the more menial aspects of the process will allow lawyers to focus on the higher value and more complex areas and thus provide a more optimal service to their clients”
Other investors include angel Kevin Moore, Fantastic Ventures – the investment vehicle for Uber’s Head of Data Science – and founding members of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center.
For more information visit legitpatents.com
About Legit Patents
Legit Patents was founded by a group of UK and US lawyers working with current and former members of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT and the Computer Science Department at Tufts University.
This year, the company received a Y Combinator Fellowship, a Seal of Excellence from the European Commission.
Legit Patents is headquartered in Cambridge, MA