Patent filing
Q. Where's it best to file a patent?
A. (From Professor Richard Levine (internal link))
Simply put, in the countries you think you'll get the most money from your invention. The United States, certainly, but other country filings are more difficult to decide on.
Due to a treaty on patents in the European Union, an inventor can file a patent application at the EU patent office in Munich, Germany, in the English language, and specify which EU countries the patent should cover. Each country costs more, a lot more, but it is convenient and somewhat more economical to file just one European application instead of many different ones, if you are sure that the invention requires multi-national patent coverage.
Very few inventions are economically feasible to patent for all of Europe. Many inventors are forced, due to the filing and patent attorney costs, to chose just a few large European countries such as Britain, France and Germany, and merely swallow the disappointment of not being able to have patent coverage and royalties in Italy or the Czech Republic, for example. You need to estimate how much royalty income you could reasonably expect from each country in comparison to the costs of patent coverage there.
Regards,
Richard Levine