A patent is a grant by the government of a monopoly for a limited period of the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling something that embodies the invention that is the subject matter of the patent.
Patents are thus a rare exception to the common law's policy against monopolies.
A copyright is simply the monopoly granted by the government to keep others from copying your expression of an idea or concept. And, since the U.S. copyright law expressly states that copyright protection does not extend to systems and processes and means of doing things, it would seem that copyright law does not forbid the copying of an information structure as part of a system or a process or a means of doing things. In general, I believe that most people in the West believe that you should be able to do whatever you want with your thoughts, even though your thoughts originated with someone else. The first to think a thoought does not own that thought when you think it. The courts have reapeatedly said that one can have neither a patent or a copyright in an idea.