You can have all the pattens to your product. If someone violates it and you take him to court its ajudge who will make that decision as to whether they infringed. That alone can take years. If they appeal. That to can take years. In the end it will matter not that you were right the judge has made his decision based on "HIS" opinion period. What has happened to Edig is a prime example of this. We have the pattens . The paten office say's that we own them yet we have this whole thing in the hands of a judge who is really very limited in Patten law and depends on clerks who are just as mystified. And so here we are chasing after what belongs to us while other take more than a lions share of the value of the pattens. We continue to live in hope.