Protecting intellectual property

You should file a patent application as soon as possible if in fact you want to develop, manufacture, and sell your equipment - or even license it. The best way to start is to probably file a patent application in the UK and then within one year of filing your UK application, you will need to file a PCT application which effectively opens the door to foreign countries. For many of the specifics involved, costs and fess, you should consult a patent professional.

With respect to costs, a provisional patent application is not always less costly than a non-provisional application. Only if you have a really decent disclosure, where you effectively clearly disclose everything of importance and how everything works, will the provisional application be less costly because then to obtain your early filing date, you can pretty much just file your disclosure, adding some claims which is preferable. However, if your disclosure is not that good or complete, you will need to actually draft a provisional application which should be every bit as complete, accurate, and thorough as a non-provisional application because the provisional application will have to serve as priority for the non-provisional application and if important disclosure material is not present in the provisional application, your non-provisional application will not be accorded the filing date of your provisional application with respect to those non-disclosed features or materials because they simply did not exist in the provisional application and therefore they cannot support such features or materials which later appear only in the non-provisional application. In such a case, your cost for a provisional application will not be much less than for a non-provisional application, other than the government filing fee, at least here in the US.