gandalf, I believe the agreement specifically states that patents are not required. And I don't believe they really matter since the pyrolysis process is already part of the public domain, so any patent we get would only protect our new tweaks to this type of system; they would not stop others from getting into the market. We have trade secret without a patent for the catalyst and any other truly secret components of the system.

Here's an interesting article on patents that I found that reinforces this point (states that only 10% of technological innovations are patented, most rely upon the old "moat" and being first to market):

http://infojustice.org/archives/31509.

The moat in my opinion here is quite wide and deep. After all these years how many potential competitors do we have? With all the deep pockets backing Agilyx where are they? Back to focusing on just one class of plastic with no verifiable processor on the market.