Caveman

Patents have an expiry for a reason and the expiry date is pretty generous IMO. It’s thought as “Startup x can invent and make money off it but after it the market should take over so further improvements can be made.” Imagine if they patented CRISPR Cas9 or the first DNA sequencing method. It would limit science for the entire time of the expiry but not after.

Claiming invention patent for the pokeballs more than 20 years after the game came out is absurd. They can keep the brand, trademark and IP for their weirdly long time but innovations should become public so the market can continue innovating.

So are they next going after unicorns that you capture?

4 times budget sounds more than it is. You have to underbid to actually get contracts for construction and then it also depends on what was actually missing in the specification.

Big projects are never on budget because the budget is just an arbitrary number of lowballing the best case estimate