Indeed; as David said, dont trust anyone.... But in the example MacDonald has mentioned,, if your idea involves deploying in an infrastructure, then you have to share.

An issue the ICT board has to address is registering IP rights; its very costly to pay more than 13k (at KIPI) just for them to take 2 months to confirm if the company name/brand or idea exists elsewhere.. And this is minimum cos your ideas may fall under different branches or fields of technology.

So a moneyed company can afford e.g 50k and above to patent the idea/brand behind the idea originator back;; but a start-out cannot afford such a luxury until mabbe they are sure the idea is going to be a hit (and thats after showing it around).

I dont want to give up on these matters - but either way; I think the 'small man' is totally screwed when it comes to large scale projects and dealing with untrustworthy companies.