Yes to all your questions. The fear of getting your idea stolen should lead you to a good patent attorney post haste. I have worked with companies that patented my ideas and then charged us to use them. We did not patent the idea. So what they did was perfectly legal - not morally supportable but legal. They played by the rules of business.
Of all the prototype shops I have dealt with (dozens), I have only had one - rip-off incident (over 20 years of product development experience). Most are willing to do an honest job but patent protect. Yes, it costs money but it will save you money as well in the long run. It is the proverbial step one of the whole business process. What you might find is that your idea has already been patented and then you would potentially be in legal trouble if you were pursuing this for profit (this happens a lot more frequently than people want think).
There are usually inventor clubs that meet locally in large urban areas. They can help you with doing some of the patent - prior discovery searches to determine if you want to go forward with hiring the attorney. No sense in hiring an attorney to find out there is prior discovery. I also just caught a streaming internet ad recently by the ad-council referring people to www.inventnow.org (it might have been .com not sure. The US patent web-site is also relatively easy to manage your way through as well. Plan on a lot of time for this - it might take a couple of weeks to sift through similar inventions.
I hope this helps, God Bless, Ed R.
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "harris.brad" <harris.brad@yahoo.com>
Has anyone every had a product prototyped by a another company? or has
anyone every had a product stolen or know of anyone that has had an
idea stolen by a prototype company?
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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