How to Pitch Ideas Without Having Them Stolen

[amcarbonaro]

Well I have an Idea for a website, and I want to talk to people that can help, like investors, and people that will do small jobs for the site, but I don't want them to steal the idea. What would I have to get to protect my intellectual property. So if anyone does steal my idea, I can sue them for IP Theft.

[Mr. Knowitall]

If you believe you can patent your idea, hire a patent lawyer and patent it.

If you want to pitch ideas to a company for an unpatented idea, you're going to need an adequate contract protecting your idea and convice the company to which you're pitching to sign the contract. That second part is often a big problem - companies don't want to sign contracts about ideas they don't know anything about, and risk putting themselves at risk of being sued for ideas they may already have under development.