Rumor I heard from someone in the industry is that the patents have expired, but now the original holder pressures the few fabs to refuse work from competitors

Rumor I heard from someone in the industry is that the patents have expired, but now the original holder pressures the few fabs to refuse work from competitors or get black balled. As a results it’s extremely hard for new people to enter the industry and the original e-ink people have zero interest in actually building stuff vs. just leveraging this kind of power to screw others and keep margins high.