Re: FN-FORUM: Copyrighting business ideas

date posted 10th May 2006 17:20

Sorry I come to this late, but I think I might have a nice summary
and viewpoint on this given my main business is developing software
for startups and assisting with the business development angle as
much as the

On 8 May 2006, at 15:31, Ian Copeland wrote:

> Yeah, I understand that, but say, for example, I had an idea for a
> program
> and I wrote all of the specificiations down, how values would be
> worked out,
> etc and then posted it to you to programme. What would stop you
> writing the
> program and using it as your own?

You can't patent business ideas in the EU. You can in the US but
they're hard to enforce.

You can't patent software in the EU. You can elsewhere, but as it's
virtually impossible to show a software invention is non-obvious and
non-derivative, protecting it is a nightmare (c.f. SCO).

The "post a copy to yourself" idea is virtually useless in court, and
only provides you with a case of prior art if somebody else were to
patent the idea and then try and recover license fees off you, and
you then challenge the patent itself. Even then, it's dubious, and as
you don't appear to have an innovative and non-obvious invention that
isn't software or a business idea, nobody could or would patent it
within the EU anyway.

First thing you need to realise if you want to make money off your
idea is this: your idea is vapour until you get it developed. It's
not real. If it's genuinely new, nobody will believe it will work
until they see it work.

You say you don't have the skills to develop it yourself, so you need
help, and you're worried that they will steal the idea. What makes
you think that just because they can develop it they have the skills
to turn it into a successful business? If what you're adding to it is
so trivial, if you're not putting something into it that you're good
at chances are you don't have the right skills to make it work either.

The other factor is that most developers are not going to be as
passionate about it as you are - we see ideas in their dozens. We are
deluged with slashdot, eHub, digg, you name it. "We're tired of
ideas: just show us the money, we'll do what you ask."

For it to be a genuine success you need to be the right person for
it. If it's something that only a developer can make work, and can do
so on their own, and you're not a developer, it doesn't matter how
hard you try, you're losing already.

The moment you launch it on the web, I (or anybody else with
development skills) can probably be up there with you quicker than
you think, and then it comes down to who has what it takes to make it
work.

Don't be surprised when you discover how many other people have had
the same idea as well: there are very few people capable of genuinely
original thought that have ever lived (read: Mozart, Monet,
Beethoven, Shakespeare), and as a result most novel ideas are really
just new takes/a regurgitation of what has happened before. I'd say
50% of the email I send is "Oh, you mean a bit like this site [here]
but with a user-rating system added on?" or something. I have
deflated more egos in the last 6 months than you could imagine. :-)

Sorry if I sound like a jerk, but I get 10-20 phone calls/emails a
week from people with 'great ideas' they want to develop but refuse
to discuss with me until I've processed and signed a 30-page NDA that
will cost me hundreds to get my solicitor to check out.

Anyway, good luck with it, and I hope you get it to work. If you want
to talk it through, you can grab me off-list.

--
Paul Robinson