Wacoms key patents did expire which is why there's such strong competition in the tablet space now, and why prices have fallen through the floor.
I wonder why Apple still uses active pens on the iPad when passive EMR has become such a commodity. Maybe it's just rent-seeking, a passive pen would probably be much easier to clone without paying Apples MFi fees.
because they didn't make it, of course.
I think there’s also latency issues and some features possible with the active pen that wouldn’t be with passive technology, although I don’t know for sure.