You could be right. My completely uneducated guesses would be, in order of likelihood: - an open patent rather than trade secret means that many manufactuers c

You could be right. My completely uneducated guesses would be, in order of likelihood: - an open patent rather than trade secret means that many manufactuers can make it with the comparitively lower barrier to entry of a patent licence rather than inventing a process internally - what you said - Their process is somehow revolutionary (pun not intended) and makes it cheaper to manufacture I'd be interested if anyone knows more!