[michaelt]

Imagine I receive a letter from a lawyer saying "It appears your product A infringes our client's patents B and C"

That's fairly clearly a statement of fact - that in their professional opinion they believe their client has a reasonable chance of prevailing in court.

Do lawyers not have an obligation to display good faith and professional candour in making such statements of fact, even to their adversaries?

[smichel17]

I do not agree that's clearly a statement of fact. An unrelated example that demonstrates why: laat week, I was having a (text) conversation with two other people, and I made a comment to the effect of, "I think it's a waste of time for you to argue about X, figuring out how to do Y would be more productive instead." To which one of the other participants responded, "...but we were talking about Z, not X!"

The literal words we had written were the facts. Their meaning was up for interpretation. If something as basic as the subject of a conversation cannot be necessarily be agreed upon, something more complicated like "does this infringe on a patent?" certainly has room for disagreement.

[caro_douglos]

Lawyers love to send letters. They also can fold when your attorney responds letting them know that the letter’s assertions are incorrect.