How to protect game ideas from being copied (facebook,iphone,android)?

[Derek]

Hi guys,

Wondered whether anyone out there has experience developing games/software and protecting it against copycats or 'clones'?

We've got a game idea that we want to launch, but have read horror stories about people who go round finding good games, copying them and them uploading them for a profit. Does anyone have any advice on how to protect a game?

At present we're trying to get it out on as many devices as possible in order to protect it, but Im guessing this still does not stop people 'cloning' it.

Currently it will be a paid app on iphone/android, but we're wondering about whether or not to make it free to play on facebook and make money off the advertising - although were concerned that if its free to play on facebook no one will bother to pay for it for iphone/android. Equally, we've heard a lot of stories about iphone games being cloned from iphone and uploaded to facebook, and wondered whether we should upload it to facebook as well as devices to prevent it from being copied...

Any advise/experience would be appreciated..

Thanks.