Sorry, can't really answer; I read articles as an interested computer geek, but I'm definitely not an IP lawyer. And most of us tend to make a mess out of paten

Sorry, can't really answer; I read articles as an interested computer geek, but I'm definitely not an IP lawyer. And most of us tend to make a mess out of patent/copyright/trademark issues when we try to stray outside of our expertise... I tried to disambiguate that lots of people claimed new design was patented; it may however have just been rare / impractical to obtain initially.