And looking at this from the eyes of another real person:
At various times over the past several years, Apple has sued Nokia, HTC, Motorola and Samsung, plus several smaller companies over a wide variety of smartphones and tablets using many of the same design and user interface patents. This isn't about Apple being offended by copying. This is about Apple using the legal system to attack their competition. Note that many of the patents involved (like "data detection" and "universal search") date back to Macintosh user interface features from years (sometimes more than a decade) before the iPhone.
Sadly, I expect the judge wouldn't allow it, but I'd love to see the Samsung lawyer show the jury the whole gallery of devices (from all vendors) that Apple has sued over using these patents. That would make what is going on much clearer.
Well, no, it seems like you're looking at it legally. You're totally right on a lot of points (maybe all of them, I haven't looked into verifying them all). Apple is very much using the legal system to squash competitors and that's shady. I'm not denying that. What I'm arguing is really outside the scope of this trial and the law. I'm saying that the allegations that Samsung has purposely copying Apple designs in some of its phones and tablets is obvious. Samsung makes a lot of touch screen phones. Most of those phones, like most touch screen phones made by anyone look very similar to each other. They're all pretty much the same basic design. But then there's a subset of Samsung's phones that so closely resemble the iPhone that even the most casual of observers has to wonder if it wasn't on purpose rather than coincidence. I think it's pretty safe to rule out coincidence in this case.
Apple's patent abuse and legal shenanigans aside, there's a handful of Samsung phones and tablets that just couldn't have come out looking like almost perfect clones of the iPhone and iPad by accident. Apple is being an asshole. But they're right that Samsung copied.
At various times over the past several years, Apple has sued Nokia, HTC, Motorola and Samsung, plus several smaller companies over a wide variety of smartphones and tablets using many of the same design and user interface patents. This isn't about Apple being offended by copying. This is about Apple using the legal system to attack their competition. Note that many of the patents involved (like "data detection" and "universal search") date back to Macintosh user interface features from years (sometimes more than a decade) before the iPhone.
Sadly, I expect the judge wouldn't allow it, but I'd love to see the Samsung lawyer show the jury the whole gallery of devices (from all vendors) that Apple has sued over using these patents. That would make what is going on much clearer.