Plus LL i believe this would be the situation where edig could ask for the extension of protection because of the unusual long approval time. I remember how shocked I was when one of the lawyers on the other board gave a complete misleading claim by saying all edig had to do is request and extension for their existing granted patents to make them last longer. Even as non legal person I was pretty sure that was not correct. I looked into it just to be sure and discovered that if the approval process takes a great deal of time that is when I believe you can ask to have the protection period extended. I don't remember though if that covered what time frame though patents before or after 1995.