The patent situation is always unclear: Companies were gladly licensing the MP3 patent portfolio to the best of their abilities for their portable audio players

The patent situation is always unclear: Companies were gladly licensing the MP3 patent portfolio to the best of their abilities for their portable audio players and yet their shelves were cleared by customs because they missed licensing patents that were not part of the "patent pool". See https://edri.org/our-work/edrigramnumber6-5german-police-cebit/ https://edri.org/our-work/edrigramnumber6-5german-police-ceb... Paying off _some_ patent holders doesn't put you in the clear for all the others. No licensing pool indemnifies you against all other claims. There's never an exhaustive list of patents that apply to any particular product. "Competing product's patent situation is unclear" is always true, no matter the product (unless it's at least some 20+ years old, which should make it _somewhat_ safe because applicable patents expired). Bringing it up to favor one product over another is FUD though because it's true for the other product just as well. The patent regime is an extortion racket: patent offices hand out exclusive rights for money, without accepting any responsibility that these rights are warranted. They don't even guarantee that their own catalog is free from conflicting rights.