You seem to be confused about the legal context. What he described are only potential civil law violations, not criminal. It's a completely different thing. Civil law has a lot of gray areas, especially around novel IP issues.
Yeah, also what GP doesn't get is that you can do everything right and with the best intentions, get all the clearances in the world, and still get sued, and still lose. These decisions are about risk preference, and the risk tolerance at a startup is by nature different from that at an established company.
I get that the world isn’t fair. And that you can get fucked over by someone with deeper pockets.
But that doesn’t resolve anyone from the decision and responsibility to honor the societal rules (or use democratic means to change them) or to ignore the law and hope to become to big to fail.
In the latter case, I see those as detractors from the overall good.
