> If you fail to comply with our demands by the specified deadline, Synaptics will seek monetary compensation from you in the amount of US$25,000 to recoup the costs and effort required to create the attached documentation of your infringing acts.

Obviously this is intended as a scare tactic, but, surely that could never hold up in court? Surely the burden of proof is on the owner of the patents to prove that someone's work is infringing, and you can't then say "We are charging the defendant to prove that we have a valid case against them." ?

In some countries, but not in America, this is normal - you could win $1 and still whatever your lawyers cost would be added on, to incentivize the defendant to have voluntarily paid the $1 instead of forcing a court to force them to pay the $1.

It works both ways of course, if you lose a suit then you have to repay the defendant for their lawyers.

They can attempt to sue for whatever they want. The court may or may not accept the case. Seeking the recovery of costs for enforcement of ones patents if the defendant does not stop infringing is not under heard of, though it is typically attached to a case seeking the courts ruling that the defendant must stop infringing.

There's no way that a thinking human at Synaptic thought this was a good idea. Why would you threaten your own customers for having the gall to try to improve support for your product for free? So I can only assume that they spent $25000 on tokens to generate these threats.

It would sure be a shame if we all vibe coded thousands of clean-room implementations, put them all on github, and then asked Synaptics for patent guidance about each one.