In general there are copyrights, trademarks, design patents and utility patents, all protecting different things under different conditions. They are not interchangeable.
Patents protect the implementation of an idea, so you’d be fine.
There is no IP protection for the abstract idea of doing something, and that is as it should be.
US copyright law, Subject matter of copyright 102.(b) "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." (https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html)
Quite explicitly, copyright law doesn't grant the author any exclusive rights to the ideas expressed in the work, just on the particular creative expression.