A Patent gives you the right to sue. You still need more money in the Bank to execute a successful Action at Law - and you may need lots of it to fight a big corporation.

A Copyright is free, effective in most major civilised countries and breach of Copyright is cheap to enforce.

The best and most expensive catch-all Patent will not stop someone trying (possibly successfully) from attempting to circumvent it. Patent or not, it will still be copied with impunity in 40% of the world.

My recommendation is to bring your product to market as quickly as possible and as widely as possible. Make sure you stamp (c) Copyright Sayzer 2006 on the product and the packaging. You'll frighten half the people from attempting to copy it, and you'll be six months ahead of the other half - so make sure you make the most of your lead advantage. Hopefully, you'll have made enough money in the first six months to be able to fight-off the worst of the Copyright infringements when they come.

It's not nice when someone copies your product. When it happened to me, my first instinct was to round up the boys from the production department and go and burn the offenders warehouse down... three years on and I still feel like that (and today is a good day - ask me again when I'm in a mood!)...