> Not really. That particular person’s entire business depends on eink being a high margin business product.

That claim doesn't seem to be very reasonable to me. Why would Visionect want eink to be a "high margin business product"? A Visionect panel is not a Veblen good as far as I can understand. Could you share your evidence for why you would think that?

High cost isn't the same as high margin. If patent fees were a significant expense it'd be in their interest to say so even if the margins were already high (which I very much doubt)

His first comment says the opposite and that they've tried hard to get the price down. Of course we have to trust him on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726#25067359

But I can’t really find any other large format e-ink displays with the driving hardware (which can be even pricier than the display), so I’m inclined to believe him.