Inventions: If you believe that you have a potentially groundbreaking idea and you don't want patent lawyers preventing the world from having access to it, what do you do?

In contrary to the other answers that suggest publishing the idea openly for anyone to use, I'd argue that you might have better prospects by securing a patent for the idea, or at least it is worth considering. An analogy.  Suppose someone owns the patent for the chair:  four legs on a seat with a vertical back.   You invent the reclining chair, which is a basic chair but where there is a hinge between the back and the seat.   You can get a patent for your invention, but you may not practice it without licensing the basic chair patent.  But your idea might be so popular that no one wants a basic chair.  They all want your reclining  version.  But the basic chair company cannot make a reclining chair  without your permission.  So what happens?  You come to an agreement,  cross license, etc.  Now you can both make reclining chairs.   But imagine if you did not have a patent for the reclining chair.  What if  you just described it publicly for all to know?   Since the basic chair patent exists, no one can actually make a reclining chair without their permission.  So the only one in the world who can actually then make use of your invention is the basic chair company.   I assume that is not what you want. The insight is that the ability for others to practice the invention depend on your intellectual property, but also any other IP that others might have.  It is possible that more than one patent is required to practice your invention. If you secure a patent for your idea then you can develop a license for it that is free for anyone to use, but with a condition that this license is not given to anyone who sues any user of the invention for patent infringement related to to that invention.  Some open source software licenses have a clause similar to this.

First of all. ideas can't be patented, only a method/process/device for a specific implementation of an idea can be patented.  In any case, one way to prevent future patents is to publish it in a public forum: In a blog, in an article, on your Web site, etc, anywhere it can be read. Make sure you date it.  If something is known to the public it can't be patented. However, this may not stop others from improving upon your idea and trying to patent their improved method.

Simply publish and put it in the public domain immediately. The original purpose of the patent system is to benefit the public by ensuring that the inventor provide a complete enabling disclosure in exchange for a limited right to prevent others from making, using, or selling the invention. If you are not interested in such rights, simply publish.

Invest lots of money, invest lots of time in developing it to a level where it is useful and interesting to people and to big companies. Publish it on open forums, blogs, etc (the free sources), or invest more money in publishing it in more savvy platforms (magazines, newspapers, etc) so that corporations take a note of it and then just mutely watch them use your groundbreaking idea to garner more and more profits and suck money out of end users. Hope this helps.

You should consult an attorney for legal advice. If you publish your idea without patent protection, you may kill the chances of it ever being realized. Once in the public domain for 1 year, it may not be patentable. Not having a patent makes it very hard to raise funds from any investors because their invenstment is not protected.