Daz, there's no practical way to protect your designs in every IP jurisdiction in the world unless your pockets are bottomless. Ever seen the movies "A Flash of Genius"? It tells the story of the guy who invented intermittent windscreen wiper mechanisms for cars. He shopped his already-patented invention around and Ford, Chrysler and others just went ahead and used it without any consideration to him. It took him years and lots of court action to recoup anything from those companies, and they ended up paying out to him, but with agreements without any admission of wrongdoing or underhandedness, so there was no punitive finding against them, only a court-assessed backwards "royalty", the inventor had no real bargaining power at any point. Nothing much has changed, except that nowadays, more and more, some law firms buy up patents speculatively and prosecute anyone that they think they can extract money from. Sometimes they'll take you on for some percentage of your action, in return you put their name on your patent. Some people, like the wiper guy, and the guy who invented the JetSki, have managed to get some satisfaction afterwards, but they're the exception. Your considerations about file formats have no force, and you can only ensure that your work is 100% secure by not showing it to anyone. IP law is about lawyers, not creatives.