1. Well, POET's patents are quite basic - covering the fields nicely, difficult to maneuver around - but still POET will need a good team of lawiers.

2. I hope that these decades of experiance will give the team around Geoff Taylor a good head start. No one else did significant research as all was focussed on Silcon. But you are right, competition is never sleeping. I just hope that most of these customers/competitors will soon spend a lot of time implementing POET to their products and productions. This means only little time and funds to do basic R&D...