How do I market a great idea?

What are the options when a great startup idea is already patented, yet there's clear market demand for these products that is not satisfied by the companies holding the patents?

• It seems like there are many possible options ranging from 'give up and go home' through 'try to negotiate a license' or 'modify your product to get around the claims' to 'ignore it and hope they don't sue you before you get big enough to patent a bunch of related crap you can use defensively'. What do startups usually do, and why? Additional context from a comment on the first answer: Here's a hypothetical: Imagine you have a great idea. You go out to potential customers and tell them how it solves their problems. They all want to buy it, some will even give you money ahead of time to make it happen. There is no product on the market that these customers could use instead, and they're begging you to make it for them. If the idea was not already patented this hypothetical would be about as close to the ideal startup as possible. However, this is the real world, and some big companies (typically more than one) already have patents covering this concept - maybe partially, maybe totally, maybe this is impossible to know until a trial is held to evaluate it - what do you do next? Presumably, you don't just give up and wait for the big companies to build it. Maybe you find a way to patent a few tiny aspects that no one else has covered as a defensive tactic? Try to negotiate a license with the owner of the broadest one? Patent the exact same thing in an unprotected geography and then sell out of that country? What are the other options? If that's the list, which is most common? Which is best?

• Answer:

  This is a pragmatic answer: Every single application on the web violates dozens of patents. Yet we still see new startups every day. The approach toward this is to simply go forward. If you run into patent issues (most startups do when they are really successful) pay the tax and thank our politicians and the legal industry for still being stuck in the 1800s.