It's neither necessary nor sufficient for success. But I believe it will deter some competitors into choosing an easier alternative. Writing iOS apps for sharing pictures of your lunch with people nearby, for example. And some investors -- particularly investors in low-risk cultures like Australia -- would prefer to invest in something with IP.
I am not in a strong position to start a fence-swinging business.
I have no startup pedigree, no contacts in SV, no famous friends, no rich parents, didn't study at MIT/Stanford/UCB or work at Google/Facebook/whoever and I cannot move to SV for the foreseeable future.
I'll take every legal advantage I can.
And judging by the downvotes, applying for a patent is unpopular. I feel that it's more inventive than slide-to-unlock, but folk will have to take my word for now.
It's endemic of a broken system based on completely asinine patents on things like (as you mentioned) slide-to-unlock, rounded rectangles, "[X that has been around for thirty-five years] but on a computer!" and as one of my clients wanted to patent, "chat inside a Facebook page."
Applying for a patent is unpopular because (software|technology) patents are unpopular, wrong-headed, and generally used by companies like Lodsys to extort money from independent iOS developers who don't have the resources for legal staff.
I don't know anything about you other than vaguely recognizing your handle from around HN. It's possible your idea is extremely novel, even groundbreaking, and it completely deserving of legal protection. It's very unlikely. Chances are you're just going to waste time and money.
I agree with your general position and I just want you to know I take none of your criticism or remarks personally.
I suspect that if it ever gets a mention on HN, someone will say something like "Jacques Chester tries to patent logins" or "Jacques Chester tries to patent apache weblogs" or any number of things that don't at all describe what I developed.
Part of the trouble is that patentese is hard to read. While developing the technology to be submitted I wrote and refined what amounts to an RFC. It's a few thousand words with about a hundred lines of pseudocode near the middle.
This in turn blew out to about ten thousand words and 5 diagrams with ~200 reference numbers.
When my first examiner's report came back he'd found and rejected two candidates for prior art; in both cases it took me about an hour to make heads or tails of what was described.
I am not in a strong position to start a fence-swinging business.
I have no startup pedigree, no contacts in SV, no famous friends, no rich parents, didn't study at MIT/Stanford/UCB or work at Google/Facebook/whoever and I cannot move to SV for the foreseeable future.
I'll take every legal advantage I can.
And judging by the downvotes, applying for a patent is unpopular. I feel that it's more inventive than slide-to-unlock, but folk will have to take my word for now.