There’s copying and then there’s copying. It’s obvious to anyone that has been following smart phones etc for the past several years that yes Samsung etc totally copied Apple from the moment they shifted gears from a Blackberry style phone to an iPhone all touch screen style.

The catch is that the copying doesn’t fall (according to the courts) into the realm of ‘copying’ as a legal definition. The courts are saying that either the design patent shouldn’t have been granted because it wasn’t unique enough to be IP that should be protected or the items in question didn’t fit every detail to the letter and thus they weren’t in violation.

In some ways that specificity requirement is great because it is what allows for multiple ways to achieve a goal without claims against this or that method. But sometimes it trips up folks who might have a valid argument. In this particular case, the court cases have gotten tons of press and pushed this particular issue into the court of public opinion enough that I suspect that Apple will taper down and even drop the issue to a major degree and focus on the UI etc stuff in combination with the physical design or on its own but not the physical as the only or major argument. Let the public vote with their wallets on that issue