Re: Intellectual Property Protection (was: Testing)

Why do I hear a voice in the back of my mind chanting
"lawyer...lawyer..."..?

Obviously, you can't stop anyone from taking the idea...especially on the
Web.  You can establish your intellectual rights, but then you have to
defend them, which is going to be time- and money-consuming.

Perhaps you can keep it secret until you have a head start?  The Big Boys
are notoriously slow to change course, and that head start might give you
the money needed to defend your ownership.

:)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan Lyle"

Anyway, maybe this question qualifies: if I have an idea for a web
site / service that could potentially really take off into something
big.... how do you prevent the big boys (like MicroSoft, etc.) from
cloning it before it does so? An analogy might be something like if I
were to have invented the search engine. In the end, do I *have* to
end up competing with clones... or is there a way to patent or or
otherwise protect an idea? The reason I wonder was the memory of some
debate over the concept of "one click shopping" a while back - though
I don't know the end result of that.

Any thoughts, ideas, experiences?

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