[gradschool]

IANAL, but isn't it too late to patent an idea after you've disclosed it? If your lawyer said something like that already, then why is he still talking about patenting it? Also, if the idea is simple enough to explain to a competitor in a phone call well enough for them to implement it, then maybe it's too obvious to be patentable. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I thought patents were very expensive to acquire and even more expensive to defend, making them suitable only for big players who use them mainly to forge anti-competitive non-aggression pacts among themselves while keeping everyone else out of the market (as in the mobile phone space, for example). Your role as a small startup is to be smarter and more agile than they are (if you can) rather than trying to beat them at their own game.