From my own experience, with application and design plans submitted you can get patten pending status for one year and be fully protected to allow for testing and seeking financing. But you then have to file for full patent or you have no protection
Bg Loser 3 - good answer. And again if the Dec. 11th 2012 tidbit of new info is correct -- then at some point you would think sooner than later a PR you would think would come out about it. So you know how these waiting games are - sometimes they take a long time, but the payoff could be huge like REV* today I waited a couple months. Also I am sure someone out there will get some kind of fedback from an email for good or bad to see perhaps whats going on.
No telling...so I will check in often cause even in the middle of the day a PR could hit like that one and in an instant everything changes.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
