Steal this subject (What constitutes 'stealing'?)

A little off-topic here, but I think the map development section sees the most of this kind of thing so bear with me.

I have a thought (don't steal it ) ... what constitutes 'taking' or more harshly 'stealing' anyway? For example I post a message to the forum here saying:
"I've got a great idea to have exclamation marks blink on and off over a unit's head when they reach 10% of their hit points and are close to death. This is my idea, please don't steal this".

What is expected here? Should I expect to be able to pass ideas around and not have people use them? I haven't 'developed' anything, and I haven't done any work yet. It'd be a different story if I worked out HOW to do it and got all the triggers working and then posted THOSE to the forum... but I mean, honestly, this should be like the patent office, if all you have is an 'idea' then develop it! As soon as you blurt a patentable idea out to a room full of people it's public domain, it's not yours anymore. The most you can hope for is a mention in someone's credits, but even then you haven't worked out the triggers or how to actually do it, and any mention of your name is a courtesy, and not required.

Any thoughts/comments/feedback out there?
-Nicodemus

P.S. No I haven't used anyone else's ideas, yet... but I wonder why anyone bothers to post their spell/ability/editor tricks to the forum and then rant about telling everyone not to steal it when they haven't done any work to develop the idea further.

I've used any good ideas I can find that will help make my project better, and lots of people have used my ideas also. Or maybe they even used the ideas I'm using from somewhere else. I don't acuse people of stealing ideas, because there's no point. If giving out a good idea makes bnet alot better, then who would be complaining?