It depends. In which country do you plan to file the national patent application? Does your invention have potential international market? Do you have the wherewithal to cover the cost associated with international filing (PCT and EP applications are not cheap). Is the patentability of your invention weak or strong?

Without knowing some or all of the answers to the above questions, it is hard, if not impossible, to tell which move is better and wiser.

Hi Feng,

Thanks for the response, usually at government or public funded research institutes, it is quite difficult to assess the market potentiality of the product or process at the earlier stages of patentable invention, then what to do?

Thanks in advance

Hi Annapurna,

Patent law is territorial. Unless the product could be sold worldwide (popular software/game or blockbuster drug), there is no need to file a PCT. Over 99% of all patents has no value (not sold, licensed or put into a commercial product).

Patent law also put small business and individual inventors at an uncomfortable position exactly as you noticed: hard to appreciate the market value and cash-short to file patent applications.

If you are not sure about the value of your invention, you may consider to keep it as a trade secret, and keep improve the qualify thereof. As long as you are constantly modifying your invention to make it better, there is no statutory bar preventing you from patenting the technology/product at a later time (in U.S.)

Please file the original (initial) application in your own language. Do it as soon as (a) you can describe how to put the invention into practice, and (b) you have ten or more fall-backs to your definition of the invention. File it in a Paris Convention country if you can. Do not file badly written patent applications in Europe, US or as PCTs - it normally takes no more than five minutes to work out how to work around such patent applications, i.e. how to steal the inventions without infringing.

Hi Julian thanks for the information