How can you guarantee this patent-encumbered part that also requires specific (very rare) equipment and is purposefully made to be incompatible with anything is going to be produced after the company discards the product and/or becomes a patent troll? A company can be user-hostile in plenty of ways if it desires to.

It's just plain old vendor lock-in practiced forever and it's a market (or regulation) problem, not a technology one. I haven't yet seen a case where the lock-in was kept secret in the long run, you always have a clear signal that business practices of this particular company are user-hostile. There's nothing special about computers here either, you can always clearly tell that the company turns into shit. When a company starts doing something like this, stop trusting it. Or don't.