> Apple certainly is a terrible company, and I think many of their patents should not be patentable, but this is one area where I think Samsung is in the wrong.
For doing what? Producing a Smartphone? Using Apple's logic any majority touchscreen device with icons is an infringement upon their patents/trade dress.
For wholesale copying as many aspects of their phone as they did. Patent lawsuits (at least in this industry) usually hinge upon whether some small number of silly patents are infringed upon, when really those patented items weren't particularly more innovative than any other other myriad design decisions involved in the product. So our system tends to vastly overvalue those silly patented things and at the same time undervalue the totality of innovation in a product.
Because the silly patents in question are so broad (at least on paper, before trial) that they are practically impossible to not trip over.
Consider the "data detectors" (one of the patents Samsung lost on, IIRC). It dates from the mid 90s and had nothing to do with smartphones until some lawyer at Apple realized that it could be twisted to cover common features like recognizing phone numbers in text messages so you can click and call them. This one happens to be particularly egregious because it is the smartphone equivalent recognizing email addresses and URLs email messages, which goes all the way back to Netscape Navigator 2! (which is at least a contemporary of the patent, if it didn't preced it)
Unfortunately, we all know how prior art and obviousness arguments usually go...
For doing what? Producing a Smartphone? Using Apple's logic any majority touchscreen device with icons is an infringement upon their patents/trade dress.