From the article: And then we’ll have to explain how gruesomely we murdered him. Not with sticks and stones, but with a barrage of patent lawsuits.

From the article: And then we’ll have to explain how gruesomely we murdered him. Not with sticks and stones, but with a barrage of patent lawsuits. We will have to tell the aliens how we used this great system of socially legitimate torture to slowly wear him down over the years. This is bullshit. The Wright Brothers brought the whole patent saga on themselves, and in the process stalled progress in aviation in the US for years. The Wikipedia page quoted by TFA says as much. They should have listened to Lawrence Hargrave [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Hargrave#Aeronautics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Hargrave#Aeronautics]