John, by the way, sends his regrets. I know he would have loved to be here today.
He and I talked about that yesterday. I asked him what we could have done differently. I think the only possible difference would have been if we had had some patents in our defensive portfolio. That's a pretty common strategy by a lot of companies these days. It's kind of like mutually assured destruction in the old arms race: you have two patents, but we have three, and if you come after us we're going to get you. He was not encouraged to do that when he started the business. Indeed, he says he was told that what he thought were great ideas were not patentable in Canada. Remember, back in the early days he was pretty Canada-centric.
That would have been probably the only thing, short of selling out to our competitor or settling. Had we had some patents in our pockets, it might have made a difference. Remember that we were sued in 2006 over a patent that was filed in the U.S. in 1999, so there is this whole thing with prior date. Even if we had filed for a patent in 2000, the 1999 date would trump the 2000 date. It's a very difficult question to answer, other than by saying to educate, educate, educate. The young entrepreneurs, the young start-ups, have to know the risks. I know $8,000, $10,000, $12,000 to file a utility patent sounds like a lot of money, but it is peanuts compared with the millions that we spent, and that was sucked out of the economy. The vast majority of that went south, literally.