While discussing a website idea I had with friends and worked on it, they told me to be wary of theft regarding the website. Since the code I'd be working on would be mostly Javascript and HTML, the likelihood of theft is quite high. Furthermore, if I'm lucky, the idea I have would be a breakthrough when it comes to being useful.

So, you can see the problem here-- I would be developing an application that's easily stolen, and unfortunately an application that companies larger than myself would want to provide.

I'm also unsure if this idea has already been patented. I realize patent law is murky as in you can create a vague patent and still claim others are violating it.

So, I'd like to search existing patents for one that may be relevant to my idea, and I'd like to patent it in the meantime.

Does anyone have any experience regarding this? Should I invite a lawyer into the mix?

As a note, I was going to add tags like, "Patents", but nobody has asked such a question yet and I just joined this StackOverflow...