Are they still covered by the patents that made them unattractive initially? Patent expiry could very well be the reason for their increased popularity.

My understanding is that the patents for Torx (and Torx Plus) have expired. They're an ISO standard, "hexalobular internal" (which is much more fun to say).

Wikipedia tells me the original Torx patent US 3,584,667 [1] was filed in 1967, so anything related should have long since expired. (There’s apparently also a “Torx Plus” patented in 1990 around the time the original patent was expiring, but I don’t believe anybody uses that one. Expired in 2011.)

[1] https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...

Torx patent expired in 2011, so that's increasingly likely why it's taken off.

Edited to add: the "Torx Plus" design's patent expired in 2011, which was put in place in 1990 as the original Torx patent was expiring then. Some more nuance, but there ya go.

Hex are a crime only because there are way too many sizes.

More sizes than any other type of screw? I doubt it. In my experience they are more standardized into a few discreet sizes.

edit: Also, you said Hex and I'm assuming you meant Torx (since GGP did). But that could very easily be a bad assumption, so I apologize if it is.

I think it may seem like Torx has more sizes than say Phillips or flat-headed screws because with those you can generally get away with a screw driver that is "close enough" in size, whereas with Torx you really need the exact size the screw is using.

If you want to strip your screws, you can do that. And then there's the Pozi vs Philips thing that people tend to get wrong. Torx is kind of a pain in the ass because you always try the wrong screwdriver first, but it's still way better than philips/pozidriv

It's because philips drivers are wedge-shaped. They properly fit a range of screw heads. This means that there's only two or three commonly used driver sizes. With torx the sides are parallel so the driver size is directly related to the screw head size.

Torx are great since there is a limited number of sizes. But hex has metric and sae plus plenty of variance bolt to bolt.

Also, Torx takes the guesswork out of determining which bit to use. If it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. Phillips can be a pain in the ass to figure out which bit to use.

Philips used to be the "good" one because although it's a pretty bad design, everyone had it. Now that lots of people have torx drivers, they're better in pretty much every way. They're a lot harder to strip, they don't cam out as much etc.

Engineering wise, Torx was always superior, particularly small screws that would strip easily. People hated it because of the patents, and getting good tools were extremely expensive because of the licensing.

I'm confused by the idea that torx could be superior. I don't think I've ever touched a device or car with torx heads that didn't end up with half of them being stripped.

imagine how much worse it'd be if they weren't torx.

I have tinkered on cars both with and without torx. Torx sucks, its also not uncommon for dimensions to differ on included torx tools so when you use a size 3 on another products "torx 3" it will strip away.

"Included" tools are expected to invariably be of shit quality. Blaming a fastener standard because of whatever some random Aliexpress vendor is doing is rather stupid. Also a T3 would be 1mm, this is like mobile phone fastener size, nothing on a car is a "size 3", so QYBS, you do not have any depth on the subject matter to have a useful opinion.

Use quality tools, there is absolutely no problem, there's even an ISO standard (10664), there is absolutely no reason for ambiguity. Just stop buying shit.

Torx has tremendous benefits which is why it is a fastener of choice for high value items on cars. They're also used in high volume construction, they wouldn't be if they "sucked".

With all due respect, I've tinkered with dozens of electronics (not cars) and Torx heads are by far my favourite.

I thought most of the hate was for tri-wing and pentalobe.