Comment Send Lawyers, and Money (Score 1) 80
Find a local attorney When you patent you will be communicating with your lawyer via, fax, or EMail. You will still need to spend some face time discussing things with the lawyer, you don't want to spend time and ($$) travelling far distances to meet with the lawyer.
Find a local B-School You have an idea, fine. What is it value proposition? Why is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? Being "neat" and "cool" doesn't count. The world doesn't need another great software widget unless that widget is valuable to someone. Find some MBA grad students, sign them under NDA, give them a fair cut at the business and go to town outlining the business.
And how many patents are we talking about? Most real good ideas will result in many patents (form, function, core capabilities... each separate) where each is more defendable in court.
Patents cost $5K per, but guess what? If you really want to defend yourself you'll need to also do international patents which will cost ten times that all said and done.
In the Boston area, the best lawyer for Intellectual property lawyer is Joe Iandiorio http://www.iandiorio.com/ in Waltham, MA off of 128. He's been involved with IP work for most high-tech companies in the area. (If anyone contacts this office, tell them that you were referred to by WANabee so that they know it came from this posting). For on-line information, check out specifically http://www.iandiorio.com/joe_word.htm for more IP information than you care to read, and if you care you should read! He is also doing at talk on 11/18 at Clark University as part of the Small Business Development Center workshop. Good Luck!
