Do investors care about patents?

Yes, and the evidence is stronger than most founders expect. The EPO and EUIPO's 2023 study of European startups found that companies with patents or trade marks at seed stage were 2.6 times more likely to raise funding than those without, rising to 5.2 times at Series A and B, and 10.2 times for startups holding both patents and trade marks. Median seed funding was above €900,000 for startups using both rights against roughly €260,000 for those with none. In the US, Farre-Mensa, Hegde and Ljungqvist (Journal of Finance, 2020) used the near-random assignment of patent examiners to show that winning a first patent causes, not just correlates with, higher growth: 55% higher employment growth and 80% higher sales growth five years later, largely by unlocking funding from VCs, banks and public markets.

What investors actually care about is not the certificate but what it tells them: that the technology is hard enough to be defensible, that the company owns what it is selling, and that a later acquirer will find a clean asset. Deep tech investors, whose bets need long lead times and large capital, weigh patents most heavily; SaaS investors weigh them least, but still check ownership in due diligence. A pending application counts: what investors look for at seed is filed priority, not granted claims. The corollary is that an unfiled invention described in a pitch deck can be both a public disclosure and a due diligence flag, so file before the roadshow. See also What is IP due diligence?