Is doing research harmful in an idea harmful for a startup?
Novash: I am not a lawyer, so by no means consider this a legal advice, but I seem tempted to remember that the whole PageRank script that made Google be Google was actually their thesis at College, wasn't it? My memory fails now, but I am pretty sure they got it published somewhere before creating Google since their first plans were to sell the idea to some big company, and only after being turned down by everyone was that they decided to do it themselves.