Earlier quoted context omitted.
The portion of the BBCs audience who actually want to know the patent number is tiny, and the portion who would actually understand the patent itself is a tiny fraction of those, so why include it? Those who are interested can go out and find it themselves without much difficulty. The job of a journalist isn't report every fact, it's to cut through the noise, take something that happened and condense it into somethin…
For the information content, this article could have been two sentences long.
> Apple faces a bill of $862m (£565m) after losing a patent lawsuit.
It then goes on to describe what products the patent covers, when the patent was filed, what it does, what other companies have been sued infringing, what the outcomes was, what the likely outcomes is going to be in this case and the factors that are likely to have an effect. It then describes some recent related news which may be on interest.
It's a perfectly fine article for the audience it is aimed it. Most people don't give a shit about the details - not everyone reads HN.
The BBC have a very predictable style. Open with a very short (single sentence) summary that covers the main points. If the reader is interested, they read on, if not, they've already read enough to get the gist. As the article goes on, it will go into more detail, sometimes repeating what has been said earlier but going into more depth.
Stop reading BBC articles if you don't like their style, but that's what the BBC do, they are very good at it, and are respected world-wide because of it.