KKD did not antagonize Dr. Missling, it just has that appearance. KKD sent M an email with a list of questions, many of which addresses the issue of patents, and KKD's understanding that there is/was a patent dispute.
If it had been a conversation, where KKD keep pestering M with the same topic after it had been answered, that would have been antagonistic, but it wasn't. It's just a quirk of an email-based interview where the questions and replies weren't edited to pretty them up.