Sadly, I just bought a Hyler off of eBay hoping it would at least be a "squier" to the CS's "strat". I was going to use it as my beater while I learned the method and saved up to one day buy the real thing.

Here's a laundry-list of my gripes:
The action is terrible, the bridge is probably the cheapest available, the frets are uneven towards the bridge-end of the neck, the spacing is extremely tight (even tighter than a guitar, the pickup is weak, the bridge and pickup are not snugly attached to the "body", there is glue sticking out from where the fretboard meets the "body", the dampener does not work, the intonation is bad, the frets are not snugly set, the tuning goes out all the time, no truss-rod (although I'm not sure if the CS is supposed to have one), nothing to secure a shoulder-strap or belt-hook to, no finish (and I don't mean "unfinished", I mean that there is nothing on the wood to protect it), the sides of the fretboard are jagged, ... the list goes on into minutiae...

The patenting issue is a tricky one because the CS is an expensive instrument and I wish there were some less-expensive models (or competing manufacturers) available. Sadly, it seems that to cut costs on this instrument they cut corners. You often get what you pay for, but unfortunately the CS (and its imitators) are so rare that they can drive up the price.

I regret buying it as the money could have been spent on a better instrument. I plan to try and get sounding and playing as good as possible because I still want to venture into Stick territory. Maybe someday I will be able to buy a real CS, which obviously is my preference.

Lesson learned, the hard way.