Welcome aboard
We've written extensively here about deploying databases. Start with the understanding that there is no surefire way to protect your intellectual property rights. All Access databases can be hacked. You can get to a point where you can defeat most users though.
For starters, you'll need to create custom ribbons because you will need to hide the built in ones. Search for hints on the Nav Pane and the Shift Bypass key. Once you've done all the recommended things to lock down the app as much as possible, create the .accde file. Be very careful to save the original .accdb because you will need to go back to it every time you need to change something in the app. After the change, you'll make a new .accde and redistribute it.
The final thing to do is to rename the .accde extension to .accdr. This tells Access to open the database as if it were the runtime engine. Of course the user could just rename the .accdr to .accde and we'd be back to that state.
Installing the runtime will not do anything for you if the user already has a retail version of Access installed. He could open Access and then open your app so unless you need to distribute the runtime because users don't have Access or their retail version is older, don't bother. The .accdr trick actually gives you the best protection until it becomes common knowledge that you can just rename it.
