@insickness, i agree with you that patent of shape is weird. but, is iphone and galaxy really indistinguishable? they are different size, operating system, logos and even buttons are different. only similarity i can find is that they are rounded rectangle and color black when they are turned off and if you look from far distance they both looks like tv remote control,,,
Ultimately, I'd agree that Apple are being far too aggressive in this, but IMO the similarities go further than you describe. The Galaxy Ace [1] (I assume the court cases are at least in part about the Ace?) looks very similar to the iPhone and is practically the same size. My Ace is stored in an iPhone case, and it fits almost perfectly.
It also ships with a "Samsung Keypad" as the default input device. As far as I can tell, all this does is make the keyboard look more like the one on the iPhone. Compare the Samsung keyboard [2] with the iPhone keyboard [3].
As I said earlier, I personally think that Apple are pursuing this further than I would like, but in some cases it seems (to me at least) that the similarities are more than incidental.
I agree with @vibrunazo, we have to think in term of consumer benefit point of view. competition is good thing, improving existing product segment or competitive product is perfect business model. there were smart phone before iphone, tablet before ipad, pc before imac, settop_box before apple_tv etc,,, xwindows before macos,, Apple improved existing competitive products, as Samsung did. Android is improvement over SideKick, used linux which is already existing technology and Dalvik on Java etc... wheel to automoble to air plain to spaceship? :) you got the point. it's all about reusing or leveraging existing technology for benefit of consumer needs - incremental innovation!
I'm not in disagreement and don't want to split hairs, but for posterity:
xwindows before macos
Actually, no. MacOS predates X by a few months. X Window System was introduced on June 19th, 1984 [1], while MacOS was released with the Macintosh on January 24th, 1984 [2].
