Goes to show... you never really know. The decision taken out
of the context of the lawsuit looks poor but maybe weighed
by the lawsuit (could it have taken down the company?) may
not look so poor.
There were a number of people at the time who thought Red Octane were out of their fucking minds because of Konami's patents. What's worse than having to pay damages after the fact is the risk of an injunction at the moment after you've gone to manufacturing but before you can sell-through at retail.
Injunctions take time or to put it in a more Pythonic version: