What are the drawbacks of going for IPR?
Filing patents must be done professional with the help of an patent attorney and is therefore cost intensive. Patenting in only one country is nowadays not an appropriate strategy, where products were sold worldwide even by SMEs.
Therefore really important innovations should be patented and not every slight improvement. Further infringements must be monitored in order to identify who is infringing the own IPR. If an infringer is identified the resources (money) and willingness (maybe the infringer is a client?) must be available to proceed - even to court.
Patent disputes can take long time with sometimes bad result for the assignee. According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association, the cost of an average patent lawsuit in USA, where $1 million to $25 million is at risk, is $1.6 million through the end of discovery and $2.8 million through final disposition.
Last but not least: IPR have to be managed professionally in the company, therefore a person or a department is necessary.