you obviously have not filed for a patent otherwise you'd know about the relevant clause of non-disclosure and also the part about letting it sit for a year before it goes from pending to enforced.
You can't patent an idea either. You can only patent the plans for the implementation or production of the idea. If you have indeed written a program to do this futile act, you don't actually patent the program as there is nothing new about the program itself unless you've written a completely new language to program in.
Even then, If I had money behind me and saw that there was enough merit in what you were doing that I thought I should make it myself, I'd just do it. I'd even invite you to try and sue me. You'd probably run out of money first though. $1,000,000 is usually the starting fee for international patent Lawyers.

This exact thing happened to a guy I knew who does research and testing for APC UPS's. (except his product was real) He and some collegues developed a system for a linear steppar motor. Had the international patent in the works and operating and a multinational (fujitsu or someone) decided that they'd copy the plans and start manufacture of the design he'd worked on. They had to drop the patent as they didn't have enough money to even hire the lawyer to research their case as they'd put it all into R&D.

If you REALLY want to control a thing you don't patent it. Like the formulae for Coke and Pepsi. But there has to be pretty special circumstances for that.

You could try and hold the copyright for what your program produces, but actively persuing it would be really expensive and you might only win 10% of your cases. Pretty bad economics.

Try here too


here troll troll troll