This is pretty standard stuff in the software world actually and to me, it makes a lot of sense.
In the commercial software world, source code is a company's most valuable property.
A feature of growing importance in the software world is integration.
Purpose-driven media, by the way, are even more common in the software world.
However patent system should be abolish when it come to the software world.
As they say in the software world: Is that a bug or a feature?
This kind of chutzpah is pretty common in the free software world.
Moving from hardware into the software world, this kind of thing is routine.
In the software world this would almost always amount to weeks or months to recoup those costs not 20 years.
And so I started working in the free software world.