Yes, although the original patent expired in 2017 so it's a little less clear-cut nowadays. They do have hundreds of patents and bought up basically all non-Chinese competitors though.
Regular old trade secrecy is also a big factor I think. I look for interesting new EPD papers on scholar.google from time to time, and they tend to be about stuff an undergrad would think of in the first twenty minutes, which suggests to me that everyone is trying to keep their tech very much under wraps.
For pure reading of text it provides minimal benefit (color highlighting and cover art, mostly) while costing contrast ratio and dollars. Especially since some devices (e.g. Kobo Libra) are now offered only with a color display, I can see why someone would call it a gimmick. I personally view the reflectivity of eink as the entire point and thus have no interest in it.
That said, of course if you want to view color content on an EPD then it is quite necessary and not a gimmick at all.
Even when your book is mostly B/W text, sometimes it may contain color content (Like illustration, or graph). This is 1 of pet peeve i have with monochrome eink.
Dermatologists (at least, the mundane sort you come across in a suburban office park) are another matter entirely. I assume it comes from doing a lot of elective work for wealthy people who are concerned with their appearance rather than their health. The PCP is more surprising to me.
Otoh the Derm I go to is the most pleasant experience I have in medical care. Super nice office, very pleasant chatter, quick full body check in and out. Something to be said about wealthy elective care subsidizing my healthcare experience.
No, the directive is that all AI should now be called super intelligence (SI), and this stems from a single decision from the president rather than being an ongoing political debate. (AI was of course political before, but this terminology seems to have come out of nowhere.)
Why, I don't know. The OP's "purity test" theory is a possibility.
This is coming from the same person that didn't realize there was a b in dumb. The same person that likes to rename bodies of water. The same person that wants his name and/or his face on everything. It did not come out of nowhere unless nowhere is the void in the brain space of said same person.
Patently absurd, of course, but amazing too.
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