FOUNDERS
Why Flatfrog's five best patents protected almost nothing
Ola Wassvik, cofounder of Flatfrog, told Sifted that none of the top five patents the company filed were ever infringed by competitors, who simply worked around them. Flatfrog emerged in 2007 building touchscreen whiteboards that could distinguish a finger from a pen or eraser. Wassvik advises ordinary startups to keep patent and IP spending below 2% of their entire budget.
Wassvik says it took roughly ten years to accept a cofounder's warning that a single patent achieves nothing on its own. The portfolio that mattered came not from the founding concept but from the practical development work, and the discipline he now describes is refusing inventions that sit outside a stated strategy rather than chasing whichever bright idea arrives next.
Source: Sifted · September 17, 2026