some other manufacturers have heated screens that are not (i think) associated with ford..ie vw, toyota,lexus and hyundai off the top of my head..vw at the min use the same design as ford (squiggly lines) but the others are designed differently..ie, lexus only put the heater lines on the bottom of the screen in the black band..

not sure if its relevant to this patent convo but i was once at nissan factory doing aa job and they had a renault in which they were stripping.i asked the bloke and he said they always do it to investigate any new technology other manufacturers are using..so maybe they just steal the idea?? this was before renault and nissan merged also