I'm a software freelancer and I quote lots of small projects for random clients (maybe 4-5 a week). The vast majority of these (more than half) fall through, typically because I'm more expensive than outsourcing.
There have been a couple of projects (maybe 2) in the course of a hundred over the last 6 months or so that might actually provide a decent ROI if I were to personally pursue them.
To be clear, I'm not talking about stealing anybody's detailed design. For instance, a client might come to me with "Build a teleprompter" and I go from that sentence (and maybe a use case or two) to a UI design and a quote, and they decide to pass on hiring me.
In the absence of any written agreement about their "idea", what would be the legal risk of pursuing these?
Alternatively, what can I do going forward to minimize my legal risk?
