My sense is that keeping trade secrets is the key to remaining competitive, given that patent applications simply give developing countries (like China or India) that don't respect patents a road map to your process. If it's good enough for KFC and Coca Cola...
I investigated a patent years ago. All I could qualify for would be a *design patent*, worth whatever you are willing to pay to defend it in court. Also, the attorney bragged that he charged $500/hr and told me I could not supply my own drawings. I decided to forget it.
Besides proprietary processes, I have over the years developed modifications to the equipment that are probably the most valuable portion of the business, besides the current account base, were I ever to offer it for sale. When I am ready to get rid of it, I have thought of simply writing and selling a book on the process, equipment mods, etc.
Depends on whether or not TSHTF, I guess.
In the hand manufacturing, production craft world, you simply accept that everyone tries to knock off a success and that you must stay ahead of them. I cannot tell you how many *artists* have contacted me over the decades requesting my process. They seem to believe that because they are artists and I am simply a production crafter, I will hand over years of work for the heck of it. I take great comfort in the fact that the company that hired away my assistant in order to steal my process is no longer in business, per se. They were purchased multiple times as part of various catalog *empires*, the work was all outsourced to Pakistan and all that is left in the US is a tiny division of a huge conglomerate that simply retails a few outsourced or outright imported items. Too bad. So sad.