Ideas are a dime a gross, man.
Do you know how many business ideas my co-workers and I have bounced off of each other during lunch time over the years? We often have 5 or 6 just over one lunch time, and many more in hallway discussions between meetings and such. We've probably had 30,000 easy over the 9 years or so.
Guess how many of those have actually been attempted? Maybe 20 (and that is very generous). Some inside the company, some starting their own companies. As far as I know, none have been a run away hit, and a couple are sustainable.
I don't believe ideas themselves are worthy of IP protection. Only the actual designs, discoveries, trademarks, branding mechanisms, etc.
How many people have had ideas of creating web-based auctions? or using e-bay to make millions? or doing whole-sale drop shipping? or other such things.
How many actually make it work?
I had an idea once for making solar cell powered electric bycicles. The technology is almost there. However, two things I discovered in my initial investigations is that:
1) This is not a market where I would have a competitve advantage as designer. This is much more of a mechanical engineer's problem, and some amount an industrial designer's problem. Someone like entropie would be far more qualified for the engineering task.
2) Distribution would be a nightmare. The best markets for these types of bikes are in the rapidly developing regions of India and China, and perhaps cities in the developed world with way too much traffic. I'm not positioned for this. Nor do I know people to do this for me, or where to find them. This is where it sucks being a severe introvert.
If someone else takes this idea and makes it work, more power to them. I've lost interest in it.