Exactly.
It's a pretty clever move in my opinion - Rossi didn't need to mention his supposed 'secret ingredient', because the system as described will still heat water up.
But try selling a water heater with Nickel powder and Lithium inside it, and there's a good chance you're infringing the patent...
So it's not really surprising that IH still wants to get it's hands on the patents - even though they are arguing that the ecat doesn't work.