Voices of IPGATE usually belongs to the people behind the company. In this edition, Dr. Thomas Leiber is joined by a guest.
Chetan Maini built India's first electric car, the REVA, in 1999, founded what became Mahindra Electric, and co-founded Sun Mobility. He holds more than thirty patents in EV energy systems and has helped shape India's national EV policy. Dr. Thomas Leiber, who founded IPGATE and holds close to 500 patents in braking and vehicle control, sat down with him to ask a question both have lived from opposite ends of the world: can intellectual property let a smaller player meet the giants on equal terms?
IP used to be a numbers game owned by the big incumbents. Is that changing for smaller players and emerging markets?
Dr. Leiber: For years, I fought a David against Goliath battle against the large brake manufacturers. What I learned is that a small, carefully curated portfolio can be remarkably powerful. You do not need the most patents. You need the right ones, drafted well. That is exactly the opening for a country like India. With strong IP behind them, innovators there stop being suppliers and become eye-to-eye partners with corporations in Europe and the US. That shift will define the next decade of innovation, not only in India.
Maini: The landscape is already moving. Indian companies increasingly see IP not just as domestic protection but as the way to build a global presence. The newer generation builds dedicated legal teams from the start and treats protection as a core strategy, not an afterthought. The gaps are real. Awareness remains low, registration is slow, and the legal system is not yet strong enough to ensure consistent enforcement. But the direction is set. Raise awareness among innovators, strengthen the courts that back them, and the ecosystem will mature fast.
AI is changing what protecting an idea even means. What does that do to IP?
Dr. Leiber: It makes IP more important, not less. The moment your know-how is embedded in an AI tool, it becomes far easier for others to detect and replicate. And you cannot stop employees from feeding large language models with what they know. Grok-3 surprised me with how much detailed knowledge it already had about brake systems. So the discipline now is to protect the core know-how itself, sometimes in a proprietary model only your trusted team can reach, not just to file the patent and assume you are safe.
Maini: Which is why I keep asking my teams one uncomfortable question. How do you make yourself obsolete? You may have built something valuable, but the goal is to keep moving. Others will adopt what you made. By the time they do, you should already be working on the next step. In a world where AI shortens the distance between your idea and someone else's copy of it, leading the curve is the only durable protection there is.
Holding patents is not the same as using them. How do you keep IP from stifling the innovation it is meant to protect?
Dr. Leiber: A patent is like a self-contained book. It stands on its own; you cannot rely on anything you did not disclose in it, and drafting one well is an art. I think of it as chess. You anticipate how others will try to design around your idea, and you refine your claims so they cannot. The principle I follow is MECE, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. Each claim is distinct from prior art, and together covers the whole invention. But a patent locked in a drawer is innovation lost. The value appears only when others can build on it.
Maini: And IP today is much more than patents. Software, integrated systems, business methods in some jurisdictions, and know-how, alongside the formal claims. The art of drafting is expanding to encompass it all. The real skill is balance. Protect the idea firmly enough that you are not giving it away, but openly enough that it can still travel and be built upon. Striking that balance is harder now than it has ever been, and more important.
Key Takeaways
- 01A curated portfolio beats a big one.A small player with sharp, well-drafted claims can stand eye to eye with a giant. Volume is not leverage.
- 02Protect the know-how, not just the patent.Once your expertise is embedded in AI tools, others can detect and replicate it. Guard the core, even from your own models.
- 03Draft to MECE.Claims that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, distinct from prior art yet covering the whole invention. A patent is a self-contained book.
- 04A patent unused is innovation lost.The value appears only when others can build on your work. File it, then move.
- 05Make yourself obsolete.By the time others adopt what you built, you should already be on the next thing. That is how you lead the curve.
Conclusion
For most of its history, intellectual property rewarded whoever could file the most, and that favored the incumbents. That era is closing. A founder in Bangalore or in Munich, with the right claims and the discipline to keep moving, can now meet the largest player as an equal. The tool that once protected the giants is becoming the one that lets everyone else in.
Intellectual property used to be how the giants kept others out. Now it is how the rest earn their way in.