So my friend and I designed and built a certain bike accessory... He's been using it for a few years now. It turns out that a person in the industry of making said accessory is interested in the design. We're planning to meet with him, I'm assuming so he can offer something for the design. We built this to meet my friend's needs, so we never planned on marketing it, and there has been no attempt at a patent.
The company is legit, but I know "legit" companies can do some shady things. Our ideas are nothing revolutionary in my opinion, but I don't know how to protect against this guy jacking the idea from simply seeing it. Probably not a huge deal, but I don't want us to go about this wrong and get screwed out of something that we came up with.
Any ideas on what to do? Is there a way to document our work so if someone did try to patent it that we could stop them? Or is patent the only way to go besides just taking our chances? Thanks in advance for any insight.
The company is legit, but I know "legit" companies can do some shady things. Our ideas are nothing revolutionary in my opinion, but I don't know how to protect against this guy jacking the idea from simply seeing it. Probably not a huge deal, but I don't want us to go about this wrong and get screwed out of something that we came up with.
Any ideas on what to do? Is there a way to document our work so if someone did try to patent it that we could stop them? Or is patent the only way to go besides just taking our chances? Thanks in advance for any insight.