Hello all,
Here’s the question:
Iv got a killer idea that requires pretty much no skill on my own part, but its an idea that nobody would have thought about. Now, I am thinking of selling my idea to a company, but am worried they will just turn round and say “hmmm, nice idea, i think ill have that! Yoink”.
The idea isnt unique so i cant patent it.
Do I have any protection under the law (specifically UK law)?
Cheers
It’s a general principle that ideas, in and of themselves, are worthless. It’s how you execute the idea that makes all the difference.
You say that the idea isn’t unique so I’m not sure what it is you feel has value or how you could claim that it isn’t your idea that is already the rip-off.
All I can suggest is that you create a detailed - and unique - design or business plan or whatever it is that would give the idea a unique and valuable framework.
You can have the reviewing company agree not to exploit any information it gets from your presentation materials. I have drafted such things for clients. If they are conservative they may refuse to sign out of fear of being sued for any idea they do use that is similar to yours. Also, some jurisdictions recognize a cause of action for theft of ideas. You would have to ask someone versed in UK law about that.
Before showing anyone your idea I would document it. Write an extremely detailed description of it, seal it in an envelope and mail it to your self. This is protection for you in case someone tries to say you took their idea.
xizor, whenever people say this, I ask them to point me to one actual court case in which this has worked.
Nobody has yet taken me up on the challenge. If you want to be the first, I’ll be fascinated to read the details.
Nice one guys. So assuming I could find a solicitor friend who could write me a contract before hand, so long as they signed it, they couldnt steal my idea.
I assume the writing in the contract would have to be nice a broad! 
Ideas aren’t protectable. You say it’s not unique so can’t get a patent (and patents aren’t for ideas anyway, they are for procedures), thus it has no value and you can’t sell it.
You can try to get some company to sign a NDA before agreeing to hear about it from you, but no company in their right might would sign such a thing if there’s any chance in hell of them having already had a similar idea on their own. And since you say it’s not unique, chances are tons of people already have had it.
I have no legal case cite for this, but the advice was given to me by a lawyer teaching an intellectual property seminar to a bunch of engineers.
To paraphrase Marx, “If my lawyer says that’s OK, I’ll get another lawyer.”
Exapno is right – it’s an urban legend that this offers any protection.
Further, since ideas aren’t protected, it wouldn’t matter anyway. No law prevents anyone from taking your idea; copyright and patents only protect the actual physical work, not the idea behind them.
Thus, you could write a novel about a bunch of heroic rebels fighting against an evil empire in space that built a giant invincible spaceship, and George Lucas couldn’t sue until you put one of his trademarks on it.
I must confess that I am now very confused on this topic.
In my line of work (computer engineering) there are thousands of US patents covering a myriad of designs and algorithms. Frequently people approach my very large international corporation claiming we have infringed on some patent of theirs. One common defense we use is establishing prior art, which means that someone else came up with and wrote down the design or algorithm first. Of course, many of our designs are secret so we don’t go around publishing all our ideas, but we do want them internally documented. To do this we use official company lab notebooks that are controlled, numbered and dated.
As an individual, what could one do to establish prior art? Short of publishing, how else could you provide evidence of when something was documented?
nevermind, I googled and found this to answer my own question:
“A much more foolproof way of establishing your invention date is to SIGN AND DATE each page of your disclosure and have each page WITNESSED (signed and dated also) by a third party with the notation “Reviewed and Understood by me”. Notarization is nice, but not entirely necessary.”
Well, if the OP didn’t learn anything from this thread, at least I did. Thanks to Exapno and RealityChuck. Yay! The SDMB stamped out some of my ignorance!
xizor, that may be “more foolproof,” but I still don’t see it as establishing any kind of legal protection. It seems to me (not a lawyer, but as an engineer who used to work in R&D) that the minimum you’d need is a provisional patent application (in the United States). That consists of a very simple description of the invention, and the filing of that application establishes the effective date of any eventual patent that might arise from it.