Idea worth a million

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hallsofvallhalla
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Idea worth a million

Post by hallsofvallhalla »

So looking for some advice. I and some friends have one of those ideas for a "social site" that is one of the few resources never been touched. I know we all hear the "I have an idea that will make me a million bucks" saying and this is not one of them. It is an idea worth a billion! It amazes us how no one has thought of it before and could take off like wildfire. It really is something that the few people I have told have said " Holy crap!"

My question is what is my best approach? Build it and promote it and hope no one steals it? Something like facebook cannot be copyrighted other than logos and such right? Should I go for an investor or will run into the same issue? How can I protect my idea while trying to promote it?
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vitinho444
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by vitinho444 »

Cmooooon shaaaareee :P

Jk, I had an idea for one recently, but dropped it because it wasn't "unique" enough, and that's what you need, you need something that can PULL people out of facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, *cough* myspace *cough*, every social network and go to yours.

Hope you can do it ;)
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Callan S.
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by Callan S. »

I think you just need to be ahead in development - deploy faster than the other guy. If it's a genuinely new idea then other corporations wont have much or any development in that direction.

Then they try to buy you out! :o Because in a way that's the cheapest research and development method itself - let someone else do all the work and risk, then when it actually works, buy it from them!

It's probably like game development - everyone thinks they have a great idea for a game that someone will steal, but all the people who are in a position to steal it all have their own ideas of what a great game is. Only what actually ends up selling alot of units or whatever suddenly becomes the 'oh, I wish I'd had that idea'. So that kind of protects you - ie, that no one else really believes in your idea like you do!
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by Klown »

This will seem self-evident, however, if you're sure it's worth your effort I would contact an attorney. Spending a couple hundred dollars for some sound advice is worth much more than losing a valuable asset - even if that asset is your idea.

An attorney would let you bounce some ideas off them, and let you know the best way to protect yourself. Usually an Non disclosure agreement is a good idea when sharing your ideas with people like investors, you should at least incorporate your idea as part of that NDA, so that when it's signed, future legal action can prove the idea was yours first.

It's usually those people in life who are successful are those who are targeted by those who would steal from them.

Hope this helps.
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Xaos
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by Xaos »

Yoy can't copyright the software basically. Ie you could make a 100% facebook clone, different designs and names and its fine. So keep it under wraps until you can publish the product, imo. I have talked to an attorney about this kinda thing and thats what he told me. Throw a copyright and date on your site and run with it
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vitinho444
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by vitinho444 »

Xaos wrote:Yoy can't copyright the software basically. Ie you could make a 100% facebook clone, different designs and names and its fine. So keep it under wraps until you can publish the product, imo. I have talked to an attorney about this kinda thing and thats what he told me. Throw a copyright and date on your site and run with it
But can you patent / copyright the "idea" ? Like imagine MEGA, it has amazing speeds for a download imo, so it must have some kind of crazy algorithm that makes that possible.. or even the file encryption, can you copyright THAT? So no one, not even facebook can copy that algorithm or "method" and use as their own.
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Xaos
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by Xaos »

vitinho444 wrote:
Xaos wrote:Yoy can't copyright the software basically. Ie you could make a 100% facebook clone, different designs and names and its fine. So keep it under wraps until you can publish the product, imo. I have talked to an attorney about this kinda thing and thats what he told me. Throw a copyright and date on your site and run with it
But can you patent / copyright the "idea" ? Like imagine MEGA, it has amazing speeds for a download imo, so it must have some kind of crazy algorithm that makes that possible.. or even the file encryption, can you copyright THAT? So no one, not even facebook can copy that algorithm or "method" and use as their own.

To relate it to games, you can't patent/copyright game mechanics. So you could make a, for example, small woman who happens to be an electrician that jumps on top of little jalapeno peppers. It'd be 100% just like mario, but Nintendo couldn't do anything so long as your game uses different images, etc. Same thing here.
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vitinho444
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by vitinho444 »

Then it's very hard to protect something, so I guess my advice (not a very good one), would be to Halls build that idea fast, and deploy it even faster, so that the growth of his idea, will just kick every other idea that is built after that one, similar to facebook, its so big that you can't really start anything like it and have success..
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hallsofvallhalla
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by hallsofvallhalla »

Thanks for all the advice. All good. Yeah I think I am stuck building it fast and deploying it fast and getting to the point of Facebook where you don't have to worry about clones because you are already so big there is no point.

Will take an investor to get me big enough at a fast rate though.
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a_bertrand
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Re: Idea worth a million

Post by a_bertrand »

You cannot copyright an idea. Copyright is over a creative work (book, art, or code). But NOT the idea behind it. You can have a patent over a process (yet it's not 100% clear if a patent really works on software, they still wonder if it should not be removed from the possible patents... and patent wars are usually... useless).
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