You may not be wrong, much of it was certainly a slippery slope although Specialized by no means cornered the market on this sort of thing, they did however elevate it to an artform. The article notes that while suntour caved on STI shifters, Campy dug up drawings from the 50's of TA prototypes to invalidate Shimano's patent, which I would say was very fortunate for them.
Originally Posted by
Spoonrobot
Just knowing the other business practices Specialized engaged in I wonder if this story has been embellished a bit to make it appear less reverse engineering and more Shimano trying to work with requests from a big-time purchaser. I mean we all know how the Stumpjumper came to be...