Patent
The Idea behind patents is pretty basic. You can report your design to your goverment, they record it and register it as your design. When someone else now users your design you can charge them or drag them to court. However in the reality this systems does not work as good as it is supposed to work, or at least not for small inventors. Big companies have gathere big piles of patents to basically be safe from other companies, like in a cold war of patents. And if a small inventor wants to defend his patent agains bigger companies it is usually hopeless because the court fees and payments for lawyers can get drastically huge. Also the system supports a new movement of buisness which buys patents and then afterwards tries to collect money from everyone who has infringed it in the past. Else the are threatening you with their lawyers.