This idea is patented and copyrighted and all that legal stuff! ;)

Just to make sure: you can't copyright ideas in general - and AFAIK in software you can only copyright implementations (of an idea). I'm also under the impression that you can't patent ideas, only specific classes/kinds of constructs - though software patent law is too messy right now to be certain of anything. Just to be safe I didn't read anything else in your post. :-)