Oh, and btw. Mr Coffee was not an improvement, it was a copy of a device invented in Germany 20 years before, perfected by the Danish company EVA. Mr Coffee is unknown outside of North America because these devices already existed in the rest of the world.
Copying stuff from somewhere else is not a problem. China does it all the time and it's fine. The problem with the Yanks is, that after copying stuff, they make it worse and afterwards claim they've invented it.