Let's look at your first example, the attempt doesn't need to fail just because someone copied it in 2 days. Let's say I come up with a great new idea for a sm

Let's look at your first example, the attempt doesn't need to fail just because someone copied it in 2 days. Let's say I come up with a great new idea for a smartphone app. It's actually an easy idea to implement, but having the idea in the first place wasn't necessarily obvious. Once I launch my app other developers can copy it quite easily. But that doesn't mean my market share goes to zero. I'll still have a first to market advantage and I can compete on features and quality with my competitors. I should still be able to make a reasonable income from my app, an income that's related to how well I've implemented and marketed it. It's true I won't get much of a wind fall for having had the initial flash of inspiration, but that seems pretty fair to me. Anyone could have had that idea, I was just lucky enough to have had it first, and I probably didn't do a large amount of actual work to come up with it, so why should I have a monopoly on it ? As for your second example, where you're trying to sell your idea to a company, I wonder if you aren't overestimating the amount of protection the patent will give you ? Are you considering the asymmetry in legal resources between yourself and the company ? There are many grounds for finding software patents invalid and if the idea is valuable enough, the corporation may well litigate you all the way to the Supreme Court. Do you have the resources for that ?