Used to be called patent trolling, but now that all the big corporations that own the politicians deciding patent law are doing it, it's considered "prudent business practice"

IBM alone files more patents that they'll never use (except for lawsuits in case someone else does something useful with something similar) in a year than most companies file IN TOTAL for several decades.

It can prevent others from doing it, which can be a net good.

fortunately i shop internationally and from vendors located outside their patent coverage.

It’s all conjecture at this point. The patent alone on the screw head I understand, because companies are obligated to protect their logo.

Idk what a rossman video is, but bmw, being a german company, is beholden to Right to Repair. They need to make the tool available

That's fair, an on brand for BMW.

So it's just another pattern of tamper resistant screw, this time with tacky branding. Those have been used for decades on cars, idk this feels very blown out of proportion. People are acting like it's evil when it's just a normal thing but cosmetically way uglier.

Honestly, it doesn't look like a dumbass screw to me. Phillips heads are dumbass screws. It is a shit design. This actually looks quite solid as a screw head.

the alleged application was critical fasteners that people shouldn't be working with, like frame connections

of course, this is bullshit, because it's been fine for the past half century, so why wouldn't it be now?