They look for patterns of behavior. Specifically how recent your negative behavior patterns are. Drug user 5 years ago but have been clean (without any indication otherwise) so long as there are no other negatives (debt beyond your means, domestic violence, etc) you’ll be fine. The more negative behaviors you’ve maintained, the more in the past it has to be.
To say the only reason Apple makes products that are hard to repair so that they can force consumers to buy more new products is disingenuous. Could it not be that they are trying to make the most efficient use of space to make products smaller thereby having a second order effect of being less repairable? I am not saying this is the entire justification or that what you are saying isn't factored into their decision making process. What I am trying to say is that asserting they ARE doing something with the only reason being x, is wrong unless you have explicit knowledge of their internal thought process.
NPR: This American Life did an excellent episode about patent trolls where they cover east Texas and what it is about it that makes it so lucrative to file the suit there. Here is the episode transcript: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/t...
The audio of the show can be listened to there as well. Apologies on not giving a summary. I normally would, but it has been a while since I listened to it and I don't want to misrepresent it.