One always needs to consider carefully whether the process to monetize an idea should be protected via patent or trade secret procedures.

In the case of patents one must spend money to get filings in place which automatically puts your ideas out as public data on display for everyone to see. Then one must be prepared to mount a vigorous effort to defend your rights under the patent(s). The rights conferred via a patent do little to protect the idea from being stolen unless you see that being done and send the strong arms after the burglars.

In the case of trade secrets you have to use spend money to put protections of the intellectual property (IP) in place so that they are not fully visible to folks that you would rather not see them. I say "fully visible" because there is almost always a delicate balance decision to be made as to what can be seen as part of an implementation versus what is hidden in side somehow that cannot be seem. It is almost for sure that some details of your idea would be visible in any rendering of the IP.

Trade secrets can be a very useful technique in cases where the outward visible details would look fairly obvious. But at the same time where the successful implementation is the "devil in the details" that you keep hidden.

Michael Karas