Ask HN: Startup built on idea-kernel developed at former employer
I worked starting 2000 January at a startup in the San Jose area and stayed with the company for 1.5 years approx (i.e., through the dot-com bust&#x2F;mini-recovery&#x2F;bust).  While I was there we came up with some interesting ideas (I came up with and refined a large portion of these ideas) and filed for 10 patents in 2001.  I did a large portion of the patent disclosure work.<p>Long-story short (I will post further about the situation in further comment below) ...<p><pre><code>    * patents filed were never fully pursued by acquiring
      company, and all lapsed in 2007 or before
    * patent appications have huge value and adequately
      describe a beautiful monetizable system -- and due
      to lapsed patents, while one could not prevent others
      from implementing the same, others cannot successfully
      sue a new startup for developing these ideas since
      there is fully documented prior art
</code></pre>
More details in a further comment ...