I'm with Tom Metro on the NDA and intellectual-property topic. The idea itself isn't what's special. Your passion to make it into a business is.
Sure, talk to a hopefully-pro-bono lawyer about all this, but building a patent firewall around your idea is $100,000 at minimum between legal fees and various PR/market-development strategies required to defend against the big guys. In any case, once your idea is proven successful, you need to get big fast. Patent law in the USA -- for at least the last 50 years -- is really just a game for companies the size of the one I'm at (1500 employees, 300+ engineers) or bigger, not for small ones. One person in this thread suggested that in order to cash out, you'll need to embrace patents. That's something for your mezzanine-level (series B or later) investors to decide. Your angels shouldn't be expecting this at all, unless their goal is to plaster their bathroom walls with worthless patent-award plaques. Remember, your early investors are investing in YOU, not your IDEA. -rich _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
