Analysis
A new Fortune op-ed from Andrei Iancu, who ran the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 2018 to 2021, and Chris Inglis, a former National Cyber Director, makes a case we think deserves more attention than it's getting: American patent law has drifted into a state where defending a startup's intellectual property is harder than it was a decade ago, right as that IP increasingly underpins national security.
Iancu and Inglis point to a specific mechanical problem: 2010s Supreme Court decisions made categories of innovation, including certain advanced software algorithms, ineligible for patents, and a separate ruling made injunctions -- the tool companies use to actually stop infringement -- much harder to win. Layer on the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, whose current rules let large, well-capitalized companies file challenge after challenge against the same startup patent, and the practical effect is that patent strength increasingly correlates with legal budget rather than invention quality.
“That matters specifically for the kind of company this page covers.”
That matters specifically for the kind of company this page covers. The authors cite AI pilots for military aircraft, quantum sensors for GPS-free navigation, and 3D-printed hypersonic rocket engines as the emerging technologies most exposed -- precisely the dual-use, defense-adjacent categories drawing some of 2026's largest venture checks. If the IP protecting that work is weaker than it looks on paper, the valuations built on defensibility claims are weaker too.
The China comparison is the sharpest part of the argument: Iancu and Inglis cite a study finding China now leads the U.S. in 66 of 74 strategically vital technologies, including machine learning and advanced computing, while Beijing has built specialized IP courts and a national standardization strategy running through 2035. Congress, meanwhile, has at least three competing bills on the table -- the RESTORE Patent Rights Act, the PREVAIL Act, and the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act -- and the op-ed notes many members oppose all of them, which is its own answer about how fast this moves.
Room for disagreement: patent reform has been "about to happen" in Washington for over a decade, and treating this op-ed's framing as settled fact risks overstating how directly weak patent law, versus export controls, chip restrictions, or talent policy, actually constrains defense-tech startups day to day. Plenty of well-funded hardware and defense startups have raised at record valuations under the current rules, which is itself evidence that patent uncertainty hasn't been the deciding factor in who gets funded -- capital availability and government contracts have mattered more in practice than patent certainty.
