> I understand that now nobody can make e-ink display without paying fees, which I find insane as it is not an original idea

What exactly do you mean when you say "make e-ink display"? That's exactly like saying "nobody can make Microsoft operating system without paying fees". E-Ink is a company that makes lots of different types of displays that vary hugely. Do you mean an electrophoretic display or bistable displays? If yes, then you're quite mistaken because there have been and are lots of companies and startups making bistable displays. E-ink is just the most well known one. Others like Clearink have been winning awards at display shows but have not yet been able to scale their tech successfully. If no, then what exactly are you talking about?

> which I find insane as it is not an original idea.

Your point would be strengthened if you had been able to accurately explain what "idea" you're actually talking about.

> Something that anyone researching the field could come up with shouldn't be patentable. Currently the system favours the rich and promotes walled gardens.

Please try to explain yourself better please. I work in the display industry and I've never heard this from industry insiders. Since you think there is a walled garden, tell us, what specific patent (since you mentioned a patent) is blocking you from building your display product? If you try to reply with responses like "all their patents" or "patent thickets" then it will be clear you're not actually walled out of anything.

I think I got mislead by the original comment - thank you for explaining that to me. I don't have a horse in e-ink race, but the interesting patent I came across recently is this one: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170060527A1/en It's a good example how obvious things get patented these days. Essentially if you want to do a circuit simulation of an electronic device, to make it more realistic you of course want to simulate real world values of components and not the nominal ones in the schematic. Someone else who I showed it to said that they essentially patented Monte Carlo method...

But we're talking about e-Ink displays here, and not "Digital emulation of an analog device with tolerance modeling"

And every time there's an e-Ink thread here, a chorus of people chime in and say "Damn Patents! If it weren't for patents, and that pesky U.S. Constitution, everyone would have e-Ink!"