Now that you have turned your brainwave into a software product that is bound to be the ultimate money-spinner, how do you know that you are not going to be ripped off?

To be honest, you don't. At any time prior to, during and after your product hits the streets, every shark around will be nosing about after a fast buck.

Legal Care For Your Software tries to cover this problem in detail by looking at patent law, copyright, trade secrets, trademarks, copy protection, contracts and limited liability.

Unfortunately, it only deals with the legal aspects and implications of the US legal system. Someone has yet to produce an equivalent version for Britain.

The basic problem both here and in the US is that software usually has a short life. So safeguarding your software with legal methods involves careful examination to discover which methods should be used. Copyright is one, but has drawbacks in that it only covers 'an original expression of an idea' and not the idea itself.

This means that any public domain or copied sections are not copyright, even if the rest is.

If a copyright does not cover all your needs, you can take out a patent - but registration can take up to two years.

Bearing in mind the price of Legal Care For Your Software, I would recommend it only to the most serious of people. Even then, it should be used in conjunction with a lawyer.