Please don´t get me wrong just because of my plain language. Of course I have greatest respect in the invetion and the work which had come with this. I am not a patent attorney but my father is. So I know some little things just from hearing, but I have never really read something about such things. I only know that in Europe, Germany specially, it is little harder to get and even much more keep a patent than in the US. But there are "small patents", called petty patent, registered design, utility patent etc. with closer protection. And not to forget it always depends on the question who is on the other side and how much is he ready to invest into a quarreling. With my recent remark I only wanted to express that such different understandings of the expression patent could be the reason for some recent misunderstandings between posters. Again, I am not at all an expert on that field and probably I am totally wrong.