I wish there was a functional alternative to patents. It seems like if you have a good idea there should be some protections afforded to you to use it. At the v

I wish there was a functional alternative to patents. It seems like if you have a good idea there should be some protections afforded to you to use it. At the very least attribution. But who can afford the cost of registering patents and then defending them? The system is not setup in a way that fosters innovation. It would be really cool if you truly could own an idea for some (sane) period. It would be cool to build up an intellectual portfolio of stuff that you've thought of uniquely apart from everyone else. To me this would be like (1) a unique challenge of designing novel processes, systems, concepts (2) the reward of having a new IP which would be useful for your portfolio (and may lead to future business opportunities) (3) incentivising people to think more since intellectual work could be 'owned' and the result monetized (either directly or indirectly.) But IMO - it would have to be cheap so that ideas could easily be registered; efficient - so that authorship could be managed fast (or revoked if 'prior art' is found); and those falsely claiming authorship could be pursed without the patent owners having to act as police for their IP. Ideally, registration fees would cover attorney costs, patent research, and policing the patents (am I being naïve.) Maybe a revenue sharing agreement between patent-owners back into the system could even make patent registrations free which would be massive? Governments could also help back this if it made more jobs (which seems possible to me.)