I cant believe it! The US patch removes the CD check......

I know it had a check with the out of the box version cause I could not get it to run without sticking in my CD. I had already installed the patch and never tried the game without the CD. A few minutes ago I went to play it. As Im running around the Underdark (this is a great game by the way), I go to put my Pepsi down. I notice a CD in the way. When I look its the ARX game disk. Apparently, I didnt take the Music CD out from earlier. I removed all cd from my drives and restarted a game. Worked perfect without the CD. Tried 3 more times and same results. I had never tried a CD-less start up after the patch cause I have never seen a developer remove the protection in an official patch. I must say I am surprised but happy.
P.S. Do many companies remove their copy protection with the patches?