It's a classic risk vs reward calculation. Basically "does this impact/benefit the user experience and therefore marketability and potential sales enough to jus

It's a classic risk vs reward calculation. Basically "does this impact/benefit the user experience and therefore marketability and potential sales enough to justify potentially 'going to the mat' in court if they call us out on it". Where "going to the mat" is absurdly expensive patent litigation up to and including building an outdoor ice skating rink[0] (in TEXAS) to potentially influence jurors in Marshall, TX (a 22k person town which happens to be home of the Federal Eastern District of Texas - a court known to be very friendly to patent infringement suits, AKA a "rocket docket"[1]). Not only is the litigation and associated stunts like ice skating rinks expensive, if you lose there can be significant damages - like in the Apple vs Samsung case where Samsung lost and was ordered to pay over $1B in damages. Then you get to decide if you want to keep paying legal fees to appeal, etc. It's called the Apple/Samsung patent war because this stretched on for at least seven years - likely to the tune of 10s of millions or even 100s of millions of dollars in legal expenses. Then, when/if you lose, you're usually ordered to also pay the legal expenses of the other party. Apple vs Samsung was largely over key UI/UX components that are more or less standards for what users expect from a modern device. Samsung had to essentially calculate "do we try to work around these patents (and maybe get sued anyway) or offer a product in the marketplace that is markedly sub-standard vs a competitor product". Somewhat paradoxically, at the "startup scale" when I've dealt with patent prosecution (filing patents - terminology is kind of backwards) I've been specifically instructed by IP counsel not to do in-depth patent searches for existing/competing patents. If it can be proven you knowingly infringed on a patent the damages increase significantly because it can then be considered "willful infringement". Good IP counsel often offers a service that (essentially) puts up a little bit of a firewall between the "inventor" and this issue - the firm does searches you're not privy to and usually channels some information to you while not disclosing specifics of the patent. This communication has the benefit of being protected by attorney-client privilege which is almost impossible to pierce. For something like this I doubt many consumers are making a purchasing decision solely on what laptop speakers sound like. Most people don't really care, sure, it's a "nice to have" for your laptop speakers to sound better but from a sales and revenue standpoint the difference is likely minuscule. [0] - https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-built-the-only-outdoor-skating-rink-in-texas https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-built-t... [1] - https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/patently-unfair/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/patently-unfair/