idea, copyright, india, patentI have an idea and I believe this will be a big hit. But I want some security for that idea as my development team isn’t big and the complete idea can take 7-9 months to have a shape, and I am affraid if my idea gets leaked, someone with good capacity can make it faster and come earlier to the market. I am an Indian and working on this idea in India, then could someone please suggest what could be the possible ways by which I can save my idea from being copied. In India what kind of registration or copyrights etc available for a software idea, and how strong the rules are?
If suppose I gets the copyrights etc. and I showcase my idea to some investors, how can I guarantee that my idea will not be stolen?
TLDR; Don’t. No one cares about that idea more than you. The more people know - the bigger the chance you convert someone to work with you.
This is one of the biggest entrepreneur fallacies. “Someone will steal my idea”. You can accept my word for it or read further to find out why.
Generally, a company can be one of 3 sizes: Startup, Medium Sized, and Enterprise. This is a very rough generalization, but it will serve our purpose.
Let’s inspect those, one by one:
Startups already have an idea. It might be good, it might be bad. And although rare, they’re most likely to ‘steal’ your idea. And stealing here means - use some aspect of your idea to improve their own.
This might sound bad but in fact its’ how startups actually come into existence. Creativity is nothing but mixing and matching ideas in a new way. In fact, your idea when combined with another idea won’t be the same anymore, not even close, most likely serving another market, too.
Oh and also - very likely to fail… They’re a startup after all - statistically, the odds are against them.
Even if they’re an amazing startup, that succeeds and even gets your idea 100% as an addition to their feature list ( I hope the impossibility of the situation is properly inferred from all that ) - they’re still in the very beginning, just like you; nothing too fearsome. And that’s the worst case.
Those guys! They have some traction, customers, and are just waiting for ideas! Except… not really. Medium sized businesses are in the midst of scaling, investors, deadlines and all the pressure of growing enough so they can start actually earning money. They’re very unlikely to even think of brand new features at this point.
Enterprise is slow. Glacier slow. That 20 minutes in the middle of a Breaking Bad episode slow.
Enterprise won’t just pop in and grab your meager idea. Enterprise generally has so many employees with so many ideas that it’s just not possible to process and evaluate them all. So ideas are very rarely picked and they’re picked internally. Also, they’re picked long after they’ve been validated in the market.
So basically, they might steal your idea, but that would happen when you are a Medium Sized Business struggling to get traction and them handing you a hefty check, not by backstabbing you and leaving you in the dust.
So basically no one cares about your idea. Which is amazing, really! But also kind of sad - you want people to care, you want more people interested in helping your idea come to life.
So bravely spread the word!
PS: Uber->Lyft, Dropbox->Google Drive, Evernote->OneNote were all rip-offs! Yet those rip-offs appeared long after the original company was very successful, that’s the moment when people can really evaluate your idea and might want to copy. Make sure you get good lawyers when you get to the enterprise level!
One way I can think of is you don’t showcase 100% of your idea to investor. Split it into smaller parts. Just showcase the minimum piece just to get the investor on board, and never reveal the other pieces. Hopefully, your complete idea is complicated enough that nobody can guess where you are heading just based on the minimum piece.
It is said that ca. 5 teams/companies work on the same idea in the same time around the world so actually there are not any ideas which have not been thought by somebody else. Moreover, copying does not kill you - take examples of many top startup ideas. Dropbox? Copied by OneDrive but still works fine. Uber? Copied by Lyft and still works fine. Facebook? It has got countless copies, not to mention it is huge corpo now. Then, do it, be the first, win the market, then buy out your coming competitors.
Do not worry about people stealing your idea. Most people are not as dedicated to putting in the work to make your idea come to life as you are. If that was true so many more people would be rich and new ideas would appear everyday. “So many rich people are smart, but not a lot of smart people are rich”(very successful business man). This is because many people lack the gut and drive to work hard and become successful.
Keep doing your thing and it will work out. Worry less and do more :)
Too many views. But I have only one thing to say.
Someone can steal the idea or the concept but not the dedication and perseverance you have for the idea and for the customers.
So don’t worry, share it! Because when you share you know their point-of-view and once you know their point of view, you can re-design and re-scope your development as per the requirement.
Because I have friends who are really good at business, and I do worry about my idea being stolen. But if I don’t share, I won’t get their business-view feedback.
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