The confusion
Technical novelty is often mistaken for moat. A device structure is new. A process step is clever. A paper is impressive. A patent has been filed. None of that automatically means the company is defensible.
Defensibility is about protecting economic value. The question is whether competitors can copy, design around, wait out, substitute, ignore, or out-execute the claim.
Warning signs
Be careful when the moat is described only as "we have patents" or "no one else has done this." Patents can be narrow, hard to enforce, easy to design around, or disconnected from the actual product wedge.
Also be careful when the technical advantage is real but not located where customers make decisions. A performance edge that does not change adoption, cost, qualification, integration, or system value may not defend anything economically meaningful.
What good evidence looks like
Investable defensibility may come from IP, know-how, process control, yield learning, data, customer integration, qualification history, supply-chain position, or switching cost. The best moats are tied to the bottleneck the customer actually cares about.
A strong diligence process asks what competitors would do if the company succeeds. The answer should not be comforting. It should be specific.
TIGRE lens
TIGRE separates technical novelty from business moat. The key question is not "is this new?" It is "if this works, why does value accrue to this company rather than to a better-capitalized follower?"