I am not super certain but I would strongly advise to patent it. Here is my thinking:
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Patenting it now will give you options. You should, I hope, be able to release the patent later. Not patenting it now means you might not be able to patent later. You get a lot of option value from patenting now.
Not sure how true the story is, but apparently GM bought some EV patent or company and shelved it as it was seen as a threat to their ICE vehicles. I can imagine well the meat industry pulling something similar with alternative proteins. I think and hope patenting the tech gives you some protection against a scenario like this.
If you want to reach scale, you want to tap into private capital. Investors are much more likely to invest in helping you scale if you have patent protection. Sure, many investors will get rich and buy fancy cars if you reach scale, but you will also potentially do a lot more good than those bads. If you are really lucky, you can choose value aligned investors who might themselves donate philanthropically so minimizing the downside from going down the private path. I lean pretty far away from the profit motive myself, but it has been mind blowing in renewable energy to witness what private capital can do in scaling products.
I am not super certain but I would strongly advise to patent it. Here is my thinking:
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Patenting it now will give you options. You should, I hope, be able to release the patent later. Not patenting it now means you might not be able to patent later. You get a lot of option value from patenting now.
Not sure how true the story is, but apparently GM bought some EV patent or company and shelved it as it was seen as a threat to their ICE vehicles. I can imagine well the meat industry pulling something similar with alternative proteins. I think and hope patenting the tech gives you some protection against a scenario like this.
If you want to reach scale, you want to tap into private capital. Investors are much more likely to invest in helping you scale if you have patent protection. Sure, many investors will get rich and buy fancy cars if you reach scale, but you will also potentially do a lot more good than those bads. If you are really lucky, you can choose value aligned investors who might themselves donate philanthropically so minimizing the downside from going down the private path. I lean pretty far away from the profit motive myself, but it has been mind blowing in renewable energy to witness what private capital can do in scaling products.