Do You Know How Much You’re Paying Your Patent Attorney? I Wasn’t.

I’m going to start with a little confession that makes me wince even today: for the first 10 years of my deep tech journey, I had no clue how much I was actually paying for patents.

And that’s not because I didn’t care. Quite the opposite. I obsessed over costs, runway, salaries, and customer contracts. But when it came to patents — one of the single most important assets for a deep tech startup — I was in the dark.

The Invoice Jungle

Invoices came in far too often. Some were from my “own” attorneys, others from their partner firms across the world. Each one was formatted differently, sprinkled with strange, obscure line items like “review of office action” or “response to examiner communication.” Numbers looked random: €237.50 here, €3,450 there, €1,789.62 from someone in Germany I had never met.

It was like getting receipts from 12 restaurants you never dined at, all on the same day.

And every time I tried to make sense of it, I thought: “These can’t be right.” But then I dug into the details, and annoyingly enough, they were reasonable. Nothing outrageous on its own. But together, over time, it was death by a thousand paper cuts.

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The Hidden Costs of Asking Questions

Now here’s the part that still makes me shake my head.

Every time I wanted to check how much I’d spent — just to get a summary — it cost me €3,000. A one-off “analysis.” If I wanted to forecast the next 12 months? Same story: another €3,000.

And if I ever dared to pick up the phone and ask a simple question, that was another invoice waiting for me. And yes, one of my attorneys literally spoke slower in meetings. Imagine paying hundreds of euros per hour while someone carefully enunciates every word. You start counting seconds instead of listening.

Nice People, Old-School System

To be clear, my attorneys weren’t villains. They were nice, professional, competent. But they were also very, very old-school. Everything was billed by the hour. Everything was slower than it needed to be. And as a founder running on fumes and investor cash, I couldn’t shake the suspicion that the system itself was designed to extract as much money as possible without ever giving me clarity.

I kept telling myself: “Well, this is just how patents work. This is the cost of playing the game.”

I was wrong.

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The Wake-Up Moment

The wake-up moment came when we finally did a true analysis. We pulled every invoice from every attorney across multiple years and put it all into a spreadsheet.

The result?

We had been paying three times more than I had expected.

Not 20% more. Not double. Triple.

It was like realizing your car lease secretly came with a second invisible car you never drive but still pay for.

That was the moment I knew something had to change.

Why This Matters for Founders

Here’s the thing about patents: they are business weapons. They’re supposed to be your moat, your leverage in negotiations, your insurance policy when competitors start circling. They are not supposed to be a financial black hole where you blindly pour cash without knowing if you’re getting real value back.

But that’s what was happening to me — and I’m not alone. I’ve since spoken to dozens of other founders who confessed they were just as clueless about their true patent costs. Most admitted they’d never added it all up. They just paid the invoices, assumed it was “normal,” and hoped their board wouldn’t ask too many questions.

The truth is, most founders don’t realize how much they’re paying until it’s too late. Until the runway is short. Until the CFO starts asking awkward questions. Or until you wake up and realize the money you thought was protecting your company has actually been leaking out into a system you don’t control.

What I Wish I Knew Then

If I could go back and give my younger self advice, it would be simple:

Always know the total cost. Don’t just glance at individual invoices — track the total across all attorneys, countries, and filings.

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Beware the hidden costs. Asking a question should not cost you €3,000. Forecasting should not cost you €3,000.

Push for transparency. Nice and professional is not enough. You need clarity. If your attorneys can’t give you that, find someone who can.

Don’t assume the old way is the only way. The fact that something has “always been done this way” is not a reason to accept it.

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Do you know how much you’re paying your patent attorney?

I didn’t. Not for a decade. And by the time I figured it out, it was three times higher than I had imagined. That was the moment I decided to change.

Because if patents are supposed to protect your future, the last thing they should do is quietly strangle your present.