Why Every Founder, Creator, and Innovator Needs an IP Lawyer Yesterday—Not Tomorrow
I'll be blunt: if you're building anything of value in 2026 and you don't have an intellectual property lawyer on speed dial, you're essentially handing your competitors a blueprint to your future. The romanticized notion of "ideas being worthless, execution being everything" has always been partially true—but in an era where AI can replicate your execution in 72 hours, your intellectual property moat is the only thing standing between you and irrelevance.
The IP landscape in 2026 isn't your grandfather's patent office. We're navigating a minefield of generative AI copyright disputes, quantum computing patent races, synthetic biology ownership questions, and cross-border enforcement nightmares that make traditional trademark squabbles look quaint. The lawyers who specialize in this domain aren't just legal technicians—they're strategic advisors who understand that intellectual property has become the primary store of corporate value in the knowledge economy.
Consider this: the market capitalization of the S&P 500 is now approximately 90% intangible assets. Patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, proprietary algorithms, brand equity—these abstract constructs represent the overwhelming majority of enterprise value. When Nvidia's market cap briefly touched $4 trillion in late 2025, you weren't buying physical chip fabrication plants. You were buying a portfolio of semiconductor patents, CUDA architecture IP, and AI training methodology trade secrets. The company's tangible assets? A rounding error.
This article dissects the 2026 IP legal landscape from an investor's perspective. I'm interested in where capital flows, which legal strategies create durable competitive advantages, and how sophisticated players are weaponizing IP law to extract value. This isn't a primer on "what is a patent"—you can Google that. This is an insider's guide to understanding IP lawyers as the architects of modern wealth creation and destruction.
The 2026 IP Battlegrounds: Where the Real Money Is Made and Lost
Let me walk you through the four theaters of war where IP lawyers are currently earning their seven-figure retainers.
The Generative AI Copyright Apocalypse
The most consequential legal question of our generation isn't being decided in Congress—it's being litigated in district courts across America right now. Can you copyright AI-generated content? Can AI systems legally train on copyrighted material under fair use? Who owns the output when a human provides the prompt but an AI creates the work?
The financial stakes are obscene. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta collectively face over $30 billion in copyright infringement claims from publishers, artists, and content creators. The New York Times lawsuit alone seeks damages that could theoretically exceed OpenAI's current valuation. Meanwhile, every startup building on top of foundation models is sitting on a potential IP time bomb—if the courts decide these models were illegally trained, the entire generative AI ecosystem could face existential risk.
Smart IP lawyers in 2026 are advising clients to pursue a three-pronged strategy. First, aggressively pursue licensing deals with major content owners before adverse court rulings make negotiating positions untenable. Second, develop proprietary datasets that can demonstrably prove legal provenance. Third, establish clear IP assignment agreements for any AI-generated work product, even if current law is ambiguous.
I'm watching companies like Adobe and Shutterstock particularly closely. They've built "ethically trained" AI models using only licensed content—essentially creating a legal moat around their generative capabilities. The premium these companies can charge for legally defensible AI outputs could justify significant valuation multiples as litigation risk crystallizes.
Quantum Computing Patent Races: The Manhattan Project of IP
Quantum computing has moved from theoretical physics labs to commercial viability, and the patent landscape resembles the early days of the transistor—except compressed into a timeframe measured in quarters, not decades. IBM, Google, IonQ, Rigetti, and a dozen well-funded startups are filing quantum-related patents at a rate exceeding 200 per month globally.
The sophistication required to prosecute quantum computing patents is staggering. Your lawyer needs to understand quantum mechanics, computer science, materials science, and cryogenic engineering—all while crafting claims broad enough to capture future innovations but specific enough to survive invalidity challenges. The best IP firms have recruited PhDs in quantum physics who subsequently obtained law degrees. These aren't lawyers who dabble in technology; they're technologists who learned law.
What makes this particularly interesting from an investment perspective is the emergence of quantum patent aggregators—essentially NPEs (non-practicing entities, or patent trolls if you prefer) that are acquiring quantum IP portfolios with the explicit strategy of licensing to or litigating against future market leaders. One fund I'm tracking has deployed over $400 million acquiring quantum computing patents from universities and failed startups. Their thesis? In five years, every major tech company will need to license this IP or face injunctions. It's a bet on quantum technology becoming infrastructure, with IP ownership as the toll booth.
Synthetic Biology and the Ownership of Life Itself
You can now patent genetic sequences, metabolic pathways, and even entire organisms—provided they meet the novelty and non-obviousness requirements. The synthetic biology industry, now exceeding $50 billion in annual revenue, is built almost entirely on IP. Companies like Ginkgo Bioworks and Zymergen (before its implosion) commoditized genetic engineering by developing massive libraries of proprietary biological parts.
The legal complexity here is Byzantine. You're dealing with patent law, FDA regulatory approval processes, environmental safety concerns, international treaty obligations under the Nagoya Protocol (governing genetic resource access), and ethical considerations that make even hardened IP litigators uncomfortable. Can you patent a bacterium engineered to produce insulin? Yes, we've been doing that since the 1980s. Can you patent a human gene sequence? The Supreme Court said no in 2013's Moltipication v. Myriad Genetics. But can you patent a synthetically created gene that doesn't exist in nature but performs the same function? We're litigating that right now.
The actionable insight for investors: companies with robust patent estates in platform technologies (tools for genetic engineering rather than specific products) have significantly more durable competitive positions. Twist Bioscience's silicon-based DNA synthesis platform, protected by hundreds of patents, allows them to capture value across the entire synthetic biology supply chain regardless of which specific applications succeed commercially.
The Cross-Border Enforcement Nightmare
Here's an uncomfortable truth that should terrify any company building IP-dependent businesses: international IP enforcement is largely theatrical. China accounts for approximately 45% of global patent applications in 2026, but good luck actually enforcing a Western patent against a Chinese competitor in Chinese courts. The success rate for foreign plaintiffs in Chinese IP litigation is improving—now approaching 80% on paper—but monetary damages remain laughably small and injunctive relief is rarely granted against strategically important domestic companies.
This creates a bifurcated global IP regime. Within the US-EU-Japan-Korea corridor, IP rights are reasonably enforceable (though expensive and slow). Outside this corridor, you're essentially relying on voluntary compliance or trade secret protection rather than legal enforcement. The smartest IP lawyers in 2026 are advising clients to architect their businesses around this reality rather than pretending international IP law provides meaningful global protection.
The strategy? Maintain physical trade secrets (manufacturing processes, proprietary algorithms) within jurisdictions with strong IP enforcement and rule of law. File patents primarily for defensive purposes and cross-licensing negotiations rather than expecting to exclude competitors. And most importantly, build brand value and network effects that create switching costs independent of legal IP protection. Apple's Chinese competitors can replicate iPhone hardware with minimal IP consequences—but they can't replicate the iOS ecosystem or Apple brand premium.
The Economics of IP Lawyers: Understanding the Fee Structures and Incentives
Let me demystify how IP lawyers actually make money, because understanding their incentive structures helps you evaluate their advice.
Patent prosecution (the process of obtaining patents) is almost universally billed hourly, with rates for experienced IP partners at top firms now exceeding $1,500 per hour in major markets. A single utility patent application can easily cost $15,000-$40,000 in legal fees, and that's before any office actions or rejections that require additional responses. If you're prosecuting patents internationally through the PCT system, multiply those costs by every jurisdiction where you want protection.
This creates a perverse incentive: lawyers make more money the longer the prosecution process takes and the more complex they make the application. I'm not suggesting widespread malfeasance, but you should understand that your lawyer's financial interest may not perfectly align with yours. The most cost-effective approach—filing narrow claims on truly novel inventions—generates less revenue than filing broad claims that will inevitably face rejections and require expensive amendments.
Litigation operates differently. IP litigation is extraordinarily expensive, with median costs exceeding $3 million per case through trial. Most IP lawyers handling litigation work on either hourly fees or contingency arrangements (typically 30-40% of any recovery). The contingency model theoretically aligns incentives—the lawyer only gets paid if you win. But it also means lawyers will be highly selective about which cases they'll take on contingency, generally requiring either slam-dunk infringement cases or situations where the defendant has deep pockets and settlement incentives.
The emerging model that sophisticated clients are increasingly demanding is the hybrid engagement: a reduced hourly rate combined with success fees tied to specific outcomes. This better balances risk and aligns incentives around achieving client objectives rather than maximizing billable hours.
The Regulatory and Ethical Moats: How Government Policy Creates and Destroys IP Value
Regulatory changes can overnight destroy or create billions in IP value, yet most investors pay insufficient attention to the policy landscape. Let me highlight the key regulatory developments shaping IP strategy in 2026.
The EU's AI Act and "Responsible AI" Requirements
The EU's AI Act, now fully in force, creates explicit requirements for AI systems classified as "high-risk" (which includes most commercial applications in healthcare, finance, education, and law enforcement). Companies must maintain detailed documentation of training data provenance, model development processes, and testing results. For IP purposes, this creates both opportunities and vulnerabilities.
The opportunity: companies that can demonstrate fully licensed, ethically sourced training data have a competitive moat in EU markets that competitors using scraped data cannot easily replicate. The vulnerability: these documentation requirements potentially expose trade secrets that would otherwise be protectable. If you're required to disclose your training methodology to regulators, you've lost trade secret protection for that methodology.
Forward-thinking IP lawyers are advising clients to pursue patent protection for novel AI architectures and training techniques specifically because trade secret protection is being eroded by regulatory transparency requirements. This represents a fundamental shift in AI IP strategy.
Compulsory Licensing and the Political Economy of Patents
The COVID-19 pandemic established a precedent that many investors haven't fully priced in: when sufficiently motivated by public health or national security concerns, governments will simply ignore patent rights. The TRIPS waiver debate, COVAX facility, and various compulsory licensing threats during the pandemic demonstrated that IP rights are ultimately political constructs that can be overridden.
In 2026, we're seeing this logic extend beyond pandemics. The US government has invoked march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act to force licensing of certain taxpayer-funded medical inventions. The EU is exploring compulsory licensing for critical green technologies to accelerate climate transition. And several developing nations have simply announced they will not enforce certain pharmaceutical patents deemed essential for public health.
The investment implication: IP-dependent business models in sectors with high political salience (healthcare, energy, defense) carry regulatory risk that must be modeled into valuations. The patent protection you think you have may be illusory if political winds shift.
The Section 1498 Loophole: How the US Government Steals IP Legally
Here's something most people don't know: the US government can infringe any patent it wants. Section 1498 of Title 28 allows the federal government or its contractors to use any patented invention without permission—the patent holder's only recourse is to sue for "reasonable compensation" in the Court of Federal Claims.
This matters enormously in defense and aerospace. Companies like SpaceX, Palantir, and Anduril are building businesses heavily dependent on government contracts. If their IP is sufficiently valuable, the government can simply take it and litigate compensation later. The "reasonable compensation" awarded by courts is typically far less than what a willing licensee would pay in a negotiated agreement.
The sophisticated play here is to structure your IP portfolio with this reality in mind. Maintain trade secrets for truly critical proprietary technologies that can't be reverse-engineered. File patents primarily on peripheral improvements that competitors would need to license but the government is less likely to appropriate. And build your business model on integration expertise and ongoing R&D rather than exclusively on IP rents.
Dual-Use Technology and the Commercial-Defense IP Arbitrage
One of the most lucrative and strategically complex areas for IP lawyers in 2026 involves dual-use technologies—innovations with both commercial and defense applications. The regulatory framework here creates fascinating arbitrage opportunities for those who understand the system.
Export control regulations (ITAR, EAR) restrict publication and foreign disclosure of certain technologies with military applications. This can create conflicts with the public disclosure requirements of patent law—you can't get a patent without publicly disclosing your invention, but ITAR may prohibit that disclosure. The resolution typically involves filing for patent protection only in approved jurisdictions (usually just the US) while maintaining trade secret protection elsewhere.
But here's where it gets interesting: companies that can successfully navigate this regulatory complexity have enormous pricing power. A drone navigation algorithm that's ITAR-restricted cannot be legally replicated by foreign competitors (at least in theory), effectively giving you a government-enforced monopoly. The commercial applications of that technology can then be sold at premium multiples because competitors face legal barriers to entry beyond just IP infringement.
I'm tracking several companies that have explicitly architected their IP strategies around this dynamic. Shield AI, a defense AI company, has structured its IP portfolio to maintain maximum trade secret protection for its core autonomy algorithms while filing patents only on peripheral systems that enable commercial partnerships. This allows them to keep critical technology secret while still building patent walls around the defensible territory they choose to disclose.
The Counter-Drone Market: IP in Defensive Technologies
While everyone focuses on drone manufacturers, the multi-billion dollar counter-drone market represents an equally compelling IP landscape. The technologies involved—directed energy weapons, electronic warfare systems, kinetic interceptors, AI-based detection and tracking—are patent-intensive and subject to extensive export controls.
Companies like DroneShield, Dedrone, and Fortem Technologies are building patent portfolios around specific detection modalities and interdiction techniques. What makes this market particularly interesting is that the IP barriers to entry are actually higher than in drone manufacturing itself. Building a functional drone is relatively straightforward—it's essentially commoditized hardware. Building a system that can reliably detect, classify, and neutralize unauthorized drones in complex RF environments without causing collateral disruption requires proprietary signal processing algorithms and sensor fusion techniques.
The IP strategy here involves layering trade secrets (signal processing algorithms, threat classification heuristics) with patents on hardware implementations and system architectures. This creates multiple defensive moats—even if a competitor could legally reverse-engineer your hardware, the software trade secrets remain protected.
The Supply Chain IP Play: Chips, Sensors, and Rare Earth Minerals
Most investors focus on end-product manufacturers when evaluating IP exposure, but the real strategic chokepoints are often upstream in the supply chain. Let me illustrate with three examples.
Semiconductor Manufacturing IP
ASML holds a near-monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems required to manufacture leading-edge semiconductors. This monopoly is protected by thousands of patents on everything from laser systems to optical coatings to mechanical precision stages. TSMC and Samsung cannot manufacture 3nm or 2nm chips without ASML equipment, and ASML's patent portfolio ensures no competitor can replicate their technology for at least another decade.
The investment thesis: owning IP on manufacturing tools and processes is often more valuable than owning IP on the products manufactured. Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA Corporation collectively hold over 50,000 active patents on semiconductor manufacturing equipment and techniques. These companies capture value from every chip manufactured using their tools, regardless of whether those chips end up in iPhones, data centers, or autonomous vehicles.
Sensor Technology Patents
Autonomous systems—whether drones, robots, or self-driving vehicles—are fundamentally limited by their sensor capabilities. Lidar, radar, camera systems, inertial measurement units, and sensor fusion algorithms represent critical IP bottlenecks. Companies like Luminar, Aeva, and Ouster are racing to build patent portfolios that could allow them to extract licensing fees from the entire autonomous vehicle market.
The key insight: sensor IP is valuable precisely because it's invisible to end users. Consumers don't care which lidar company's technology is in their autonomous vehicle—they care that the vehicle works safely. This allows sensor IP owners to capture value through B2B licensing without facing brand or consumer preference pressure.
Rare Earth Element Processing
Here's where IP meets geopolitics in the most literal sense. Rare earth elements (REEs) are critical for permanent magnets used in electric motors, wind turbines, and countless defense applications. China controls approximately 70% of global REE mining and, more importantly, 90% of REE processing capacity.
But here's the thing: REE processing isn't just about access to raw materials—it's about proprietary metallurgical techniques protected by trade secrets and patents. Companies like MP Materials and Lynas Rare Earths are developing patented processes for separating and purifying rare earth elements that could break China's processing monopoly. The IP value here is strategic, not just economic—governments are willing to subsidize development of domestic REE processing capabilities for national security reasons.
Trade Secrets vs. Patents: The Strategic Choice That Defines Outcomes
One of the most consequential decisions IP lawyers help clients make is whether to pursue patent protection or maintain trade secret protection for a given innovation. This choice has profound strategic implications that most founders underestimate.
Patents provide a 20-year monopoly (from filing date) in exchange for public disclosure. Trade secrets provide potentially indefinite protection as long as the information remains secret. The conventional wisdom is to patent anything that could be reverse-engineered and maintain trade secrets for anything that cannot. But this oversimplifies a complex decision.
Consider Coca-Cola's formula—the canonical example of trade secret protection. Coca-Cola could have patented their formula in 1886, obtained a 17-year monopoly (patent term at the time), and then watched competitors legally replicate it in 1903. Instead, they've maintained trade secret protection for 140 years. The accumulated value of that decision is incalculable.
But trade secret protection has costs that are often overlooked. You must maintain confidentiality—which means restricted employee access, NDAs, physical security measures, and constant vigilance against insider threats. You have no protection against independent invention or reverse engineering. And if the secret is independently discovered or reverse-engineered, you have no recourse.
The sophisticated approach recognizes that patent and trade secret protection can be complementary. File patents on the aspects of your invention that will be publicly visible anyway (product features, hardware designs, user interfaces). Maintain trade secrets for the proprietary processes, algorithms, and techniques that enable those features but aren't visible to end users.
Google's search algorithm is the perfect example. They've published thousands of patents on peripheral search technologies—enough to build a defensive patent portfolio and prevent competitors from patenting obvious improvements. But the core ranking algorithm, the secret sauce that makes Google search superior, remains a heavily guarded trade secret. This dual strategy maximizes protection while minimizing vulnerability.
IP Due Diligence: What Sophisticated Investors Actually Look For
As someone who's evaluated hundreds of IP portfolios during due diligence processes, let me share what actually matters versus what founders think matters.
Patent count is nearly meaningless. I've seen companies with 500+ patents that were essentially worthless and companies with 12 patents that controlled entire market segments. What matters is claim quality, prosecution history, and strategic positioning relative to competitors.
When I'm evaluating an IP portfolio, I'm specifically looking for:
Freedom to operate analysis: Does this company have the legal right to commercialize their product without infringing third-party IP? Shockingly, many startups never conduct FTO analysis and are essentially ticking time bombs waiting for infringement suits. The best IP lawyers proactively identify potential conflicts and develop design-around strategies before they become existential threats.
Prosecution history quality: Did the company file broad, aggressive claims that survived substantive examination, or did they cave immediately at the first office action and accept narrow, easily designed-around claims? The prosecution history reveals how strong the patents actually are and how they'll hold up in litigation.
Inventor continuity and assignment: Are the actual inventors still with the company? Did they properly assign their rights to the company? You'd be amazed how many startups have IP ownership disputes lurking because a co-founder who left early never properly assigned their patent rights. This is corporate hygiene that should be table stakes, but it's often overlooked.
Competitive moat analysis: Does the IP portfolio actually prevent competitors from entering the market, or can they easily design around it? I want to see patents on fundamental enabling technologies, not just on specific product implementations. The strongest portfolios cover multiple approaches to solving the same problem, foreclosing competitors' design-around options.
Licensing leverage: Can this IP portfolio generate licensing revenue independent of the company's product success? Some of the best IP investments are companies that stumbled in product execution but had patent portfolios valuable enough to either license profitably or sell to patent aggregators for 8-9 figures.
The 2026 IP Lawyer Technology Stack
IP law is being transformed by technology in ways that are creating winner-take-all dynamics among law firms. The best IP lawyers in 2026 aren't just legal experts—they're power users of AI-powered patent analysis tools, automated prior art search systems, and predictive litigation analytics.
Tools like Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, and Patent Bots are providing unprecedented insight into judge behavior, litigation outcomes, and patent office examiner tendencies. This creates information asymmetry—lawyers using these tools can make dramatically better strategic decisions than those relying on traditional research methods.
The AI patent drafting tools are particularly interesting. Systems trained on millions of successful patent applications can now generate initial patent drafts that are 70-80% complete, reducing partner time required for routine applications. This should theoretically reduce costs, but in practice, it's mostly expanding partner leverage—they can now supervise 3-4x as many patent applications with the same time commitment, increasing revenue rather than reducing client costs.
What this means for clients: demand that your IP lawyers demonstrate they're using these tools. If they're still doing manual prior art searches and drafting patents from scratch without AI assistance, you're paying premium rates for substandard work. The best firms have invested heavily in legal tech and are passing at least some efficiency gains to clients.
Categorizing IP Lawyers: The 2026 Taxonomy
Not all IP lawyers are created equal, and understanding the subspecialties is essential for matching your needs to appropriate expertise. Here's how I categorize the IP legal market:
Patent Prosecutors: These lawyers write and file patent applications. They're evaluated primarily on allowance rates (what percentage of their applications successfully issue as patents) and claim breadth (how much territory the issued patents actually protect). The best patent prosecutors have technical PhDs in addition to law degrees and work exclusively in narrow technology domains where they've developed deep expertise.
IP Litigators: These are courtroom lawyers who handle infringement suits, validity challenges, and PTAB proceedings. They're evaluated on win rates, settlement leverage, and cost efficiency. Top IP litigators often come from federal clerkships (especially Federal Circuit or Supreme Court) and have deep relationships with specific judges and venues.
IP Transactional Lawyers: These lawyers structure licensing deals, M&A transactions with significant IP components, and joint development agreements. They're evaluated on deal completion rates and value optimization. The best transactional IP lawyers understand both legal and business strategy and can structure deals that maximize client value while minimizing risk.
Trade Secret Specialists: These lawyers focus on confidentiality agreements, employee mobility issues, and trade secret misappropriation cases. They're increasingly important as companies shift away from patent protection toward trade secret strategies. Top trade secret lawyers understand both legal frameworks and practical information security.
International IP Coordinators: These lawyers manage global IP portfolios across multiple jurisdictions, navigating different patent systems, trademark regimes, and enforcement mechanisms. They're essential for any company with international operations or ambitions.
The key insight: you almost certainly need multiple specialists rather than a single generalist IP lawyer. A solo practitioner who claims to handle everything from patent prosecution to complex litigation is probably not actually competent at all of those subspecialties. Build a team of specialists and use a coordinating lawyer to manage the portfolio holistically.
The Actionable Framework: How to Actually Deploy This Knowledge
Let me synthesize this into concrete recommendations based on your situation.
If you're a founder building an IP-dependent startup: Engage an IP lawyer before you disclose anything publicly, including customer demos or investor pitches. Public disclosure can destroy patentability in many jurisdictions. File provisional patent applications early and often—they're relatively cheap insurance that preserves your filing date while you validate product-market fit. But don't waste money on comprehensive patent prosecution until you've achieved some commercial traction. Many startups over-invest in IP at the pre-revenue stage.
If you're an investor evaluating IP-dependent companies: Demand comprehensive FTO analysis during due diligence. Hire your own independent IP counsel to review the portfolio—don't rely solely on the company's lawyers. Specifically investigate whether key inventors have properly assigned their rights, whether any inventions were developed using prior employer resources, and whether the company has received any infringement notices or cease-and-desist letters.
If you're an executive at an established company: Conduct an annual IP portfolio audit to identify underutilized assets that could be licensed or sold. Consider offensive patent aggregation strategies in critical technology areas to build negotiating leverage. And most importantly, maintain rigorous trade secret protection programs—employee departures to competitors are often more dangerous than formal IP challenges.
If you're a creator or individual innovator: Understand that individual inventors have very limited leverage in the modern IP system. Patent enforcement is prohibitively expensive for individuals—you either need to license your IP to a company that can commercialize it or sell outright to a patent aggregator. Filing patents as an individual without a commercialization strategy is usually money poorly spent.
The Uncomfortable Truth About IP Law's Future
I'll close with a prediction that most IP lawyers won't admit publicly: the golden age of IP monopolies is ending. Not immediately, not completely, but the trend is clear.
Software patents are increasingly difficult to obtain and enforce post-Alice Corp v. CLS Bank. Gene patents were largely invalidated by Myriad. Business method patents are nearly extinct after Bilski. And as AI systems become capable of generating innovations automatically, the entire philosophical foundation of patent law—rewarding human ingenuity with temporary monopolies—becomes questionable.
We're moving toward a world where IP protection is less about legal exclusivity and more about practical execution advantages. The companies that will win aren't necessarily those with the strongest patent portfolios—they're those that can innovate faster than competitors can copy, build network effects that create lock-in independent of IP, and develop integration expertise that can't be replicated by reading patent disclosures.
But this doesn't make IP lawyers obsolete—it makes them more important. As legal IP protection weakens, the strategic value of trade secrets, regulatory moats, and defensive patent portfolios increases. The lawyers who understand this transition and can help clients navigate it will command premium fees. Those stuck in the old paradigm of maximizing patent counts will become commoditized.
You need IP lawyers in 2026 not because patents are iron-clad monopolies—they're not. You need them because navigating the complex intersection of innovation, regulation, competition, and geopolitics requires specialized expertise that determines whether your valuable creations generate durable returns or get arbitraged away by competitors. Choose wisely.