There are some barriers that arguably don’t change in their ability to deter competition as the relative scale of competitors changes. This category generally includes protected intellectual property in the form of trade secrets and patents.

These barriers have proven to be critical for numerous companies, especially in the analog world of physical products. Pharmaceutical startups rely on patents and Coca Cola on trade secrets. In the information technology world, however, intellectual property related barriers often play a less central role as there are often numerous ways to skin a cat, making it difficult to defend every permutation. That said, there are technology companies, such as Google and Microsoft, that have leveraged intellectual property to secure their market positions.

It’s worth highlighting the fact that while patents do not provide indefinite protection (since they expire), their strength as a barrier is not determined by the relative scale of the competition. For this reason they are included in this category of barriers in my framework.

There are two questions that need to be answered in order to determine the significance of a static barrier.

First: “Does the barrier provide sufficient protection?” If the patent, trade secret or otherwise only protects either a non-core element of the business or does not prevent another company from solving the same problem using a different methodology, the barrier may not be very robust. The more that static barriers shroud key business assets from competition the more robust that they are.

Second: “How defensible is the barrier?” Intellectual property can be expensive to defend. If the legal cost associated with protecting a patent would bankrupt the company, it’s not viable to sustain the barrier.

Static barriers can provide meaningful value if they prevent competitors from solving the same problem in a different way and are defendable. If they don’t meet both of those criteria, these barriers may not prove effective.