can idea be patented

Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard, there is no effective way to protect an idea through intellectual property law. Copyright protects expression and patent law protects inventions, and neither protect ideas. In both cases the idea is the first critical step, but without some identifiable embodiment of the idea there can be no intellectual property protection. That does not mean that you should give up when you only have an idea, but it does mean that you ought to proceed to flush out your idea to the point where it is concrete enough to be more than what the law would call a “mere idea.” The moral of the story is that ideas alone cannot be protected, so you need to think in terms of invention.