jlr@we53.UUCP (JAN L. RICHARDSON) (02/17/86)
*****(Munch Munch--This one is for the Line Eater--Hungry little grubber)***** My husband and I are contract programmers who have recently become disgruntled with working for someone else all the time. We are therefore done considerable work on designing software packages which we hope to market and sell. Here's where we need help. We live in rural, east central MO and do not know any lawyers competent in addressing the legal issues related to computers. We have access to St. Louis, but are not familiar with the legal community, so again we do not know anyone to contact. Can someone out there help us or direct to legal counsel in our area who can help us? The specific situation is as follows: We have a product designed for an untouched vertical market. The product is to big for us to develope it ourselves, we have had to face the fact that we either need an influx of capital which will allow us to hire 2 or 3 top level people, or we must sell the system to a larger organization. We are attempting to investigate both possibilities. The system involves graphics imaging, optical storage, and several other new technologies so we have to approach fairly sophisticated shops. One group intested in a large corporation with larger than life lawyers hanging all over. We need help. If we give them our design to review--What keeps them from stealing it? (even if copyrighted). If they buy our design for royalties, what keeps them from sitting on it and latter developing a similiar system on their own, just different enough to avoid the royalties? Do non- disclosure agreements really work, no non compete agreements work? We are new to selling software-completely new---and need help. All information will be appreciated. This is a very large, very innovative system which we can not afford to loose due to our inexperience. We have pretty decided to sell the system because we do not have any ready source of capital available nor do we have access to information, other than state and federal SBA money, on private funding. Missouri is very dry on capital and the banks are a joke! Jan Richardson Richardson Consulting 147 Joel Avenue Union, MO 63084 314 583-4563 temporary net address: ihnp4!we53!jlr