RE: FN-FORUM: Copyrighting business ideas

date posted 10th May 2006 18:12


> 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.

Ha, ha! Well recovered at the end there! I thought you were going to put the
boot in one more time for good luck but no! You brush him off and let him
live to fight another day.

Michael Palmer Web Developer

MRP=dEV
t: 07977 294840
www.mrpdev.co.uk






-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL REMOVED] [EMAIL REMOVED] On Behalf Of Paul
Robinson
Sent: 10 May 2006 18:19
To: FN-FORUM / [EMAIL REMOVED]
Subject: Re: FN-FORUM: Copyrighting business ideas


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

--
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