Speaking of Satan

The current travelling circus surrounding Apple's ongoing blackmail of Samsung is darkly fascinating.  It's amazing that trials like this happen at all, let alone that they happen so frequently.  It's not amazing that the average person's reaction is to agree with Apple that Samsung copied the iPhone.  They did.  So what?

Everybody copies.  Copying in itself is not an evil word.  We all stand on the shoulders of giants.  Nobody is that special.  Apple made a brilliant breakthrough with the iPhone, and it clearly was the shot heard 'round the world in the cellphone industry.  Of course Samsung was going to learn from it and apply some of Apple's insight to their own models.  To do otherwise would be to willingly sabotage their own business.

Yes, Samsung's phones look similar to iPhones, because they're rounded rectangles with ginormous screens and hardly any buttons.  Rounded rectangles make logical sense because they are ergonomic and won't chip furniture.  Apple's other innovations have similar practical reasons for existing.  You can't (or shouldn't be able to) patent that.

If Samsung started putting a big stylized piece of fruit on their phones and rebranding them "The iStrawberry", I would see an ethical reason to sue.  At that point they'd actually be trying to FOOL people into buying the wrong phone.  Samsung was not doing that.  It's like some caveman trying to rub two wet fish together and wondering why there's no spark.  Once Og in the cave next door lights a fire using sticks, Oop is going to follow that example unless he's a total incompetant.  Welcome to real life.

Apple does not have an exclusive right to rounded rectangles.  Nobody has ever bought a Samsung phone and been crushed to realize it isn't an iPhone.  Apple are crooks, using the legal system to blackmail their competition.  This should be obvious to anyone with a brain, and it's clearly obvious to the judge of this case, who is doing an admirable job of towing the line of impartiality when one side is so clearly doing the work of Lucifer.