Filing in juridictions worldwide is a routine process when you apply for an important patent. Any respectable patent lawyer should be able to deal with it.
But you have to choose to do it and there is an additional cost, if I am not mistaken. When our startup filed our patents in the US market, we chose not to do the same in Europe...
Sure, and most large corporations with worldwide influence do it automatically.
The last action one of my previous employers took was to send me payments for a patent I'm named on when they filed it in the EU. I had already quit, but it was easier to just send me the check than to cancel it :-)
Good point about that! Obviously there are alot of big players like that. However I heard this was a small lab, so I guess we don't know yet what their patenting power is.