That has never been the premise of copyright, and patent law did not work that way up until about 20 years ago. In theory, ideas were never supposed to be pate

That has never been the premise of copyright, and patent law did not work that way up until about 20 years ago. In theory, ideas were never supposed to be patentable. A patent had to show both an idea and a specific implementation of it. Only with the increase of legally-questionable patents on software and business methods have ideas been patented.