Copyright is a little different for quilt world. Basically, if you can draw it and I can copy it, I am "fair use" to do it for myself.
BUT -- the Directions for how to do it can be protected under copyright. So you can't copyright a 9-patch, but for your technique or setting you can the directions.
As a reasonably talented person with graph paper, I can usually figure out whatever it is I see. When the reason I design it out is solely because of someone else's work -- I will buy the pattern. Elizabeth Hartman Hazel Hedgehog was one, and the Labyrinth Walk by the Guilty Quilter/Christopher Florence is another.