Getting your timing right can be key to making the most of a patent, according to Dr Michael Sharp, head of the intellectual-property unit at Enterprise Ireland.
"It's a common misconception that if you have an idea, the first thing you need to do is rush out and file a patent application," he says. "Instead we would say you have to get a balance."
Once you file for a patent on an invention, the clock starts ticking, and there's a timeframe within which you have to make certain commercial decisions, like which countries to patent in.
And the risk of rushing to patent, explains Dr Sharp, is that you may not yet have the best information for making those decisions.
"If you have filed the patent application at an early stage in the technological development, then you are locked into the patent system and you may not know whether or not it's going to be worthwhile. Inevitably, as you develop something you find it works a bit differently than you thought," he says.
"Basically, you need to balance the need to patent against the technical and commercial scale. In our experience, a lot of patents are filed earlier than they really need to be.
"And then you find yourself down the road with a patenting deadline and you wish you had another month," says Dr Sharp. "You have got yourself into a ticking clock that doesn't stop."
Enterprise Ireland supports innovators in universities and small-to-medium companies here, offering advice and funding to help commercialise inventions. But the nature of many of today's inventions can pose a few challenges, says Dr Sharp.
"The patent system itself is a 19th century invention - and it works very well for 19th century technology, where you have mechanical engineering. It worked on paper.
"If you have a machine and you can do a drawing, or if a chemical has a specific formula, you can define precisely what it is and where the monopoly is," he says.
"But when you get into the 21st century technology of biotechnology and ICT, where you are talking about refinements and it's quite esoteric, then the patents system has a difficulty because you are defining why what you are doing is different to what someone else is doing."
However, he believes that patents offer a valuable form of competitive protection for today's innovators.
"There was a time before world trade when individual countries could put up barriers to stop people competing," he explains.
"Today, patents are one of the few ways to get a legal monopoly on something," Sharp concludes.
