I'd love to know how HF acquired a "provisional patent" considering no such thing exists.
What do you mean provisional patents don't exist? People file provisional patents all the time (at least in the USA). Am I misunderstanding you?
There is no such thing as a provisional patent. There is however a provisional application. This particular application expires after 12 months and does not automatically mature into a patent. In fact, the PTO (patent and trademark office) does not examine provisional applications. A regular application must be filed within 12 months of the provisional application AND the provisional application must contain sufficient support for the regular application. If they didn't do the provisional correctly, it wont help you and also you are running out of time (perhaps have already) to file a regular application.