[gajo357]

There is no way to protect your idea from being copied/stolen.

It happened a million times over, you have some brilliant idea, people start using it, and after a few months some big company puts 10-100 engineers on it and they do the same thing.

I would say that the key is to get to a big enough audience so they would rather buy you out than compete. Easier said than done :P

And the biggest question is: do you want to commit 100% of your time and money to building your company, or you would rather spend your time building new things?