Hacker News Reader

"gotten hold of" aka "looked it up"

To be fair, even doing that is a lot compared to some news sources

True, but really, it's not that much work. News media needs to get back to true journalism. (Sorry to soapbox, I just hate the state of "news" these days)

It is. https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20...

They aren't typically published by the USPTO until 18 months after the priority date.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1120.html

IME, it's typical for news outlets large and small to mine public data sources and imply that their source is somehow exclusive/private/etc.

Not necessarily before they're accepted I guess?

They are. Electrek just likes overstating their own importance.