While your post gets a lot of facts right, you seem to be giving Apple the role of the good guy a bit too quickly. Apple has been flooding the mobile phone spa

While your post gets a lot of facts right, you seem to be giving Apple the role of the good guy a bit too quickly. Apple has been flooding the mobile phone space with patents ever since they started working on the iPhone and the industry has been suffering from crippling stifling of innovation ever since (in case you were wondering why it took so long for Android to get "pinch to zoom"). As for your other point: > but it's pretty difficult to imagine them going from retail hardware company to professional patent troll There is an in-between: they are working on apps that they are not sure they will be able to ship in time, so they are filing these patents to make sure nobody will beat them. If you have a great app, the only decent way to execute is to ship it and to grab the market. Using patents to stifle competitors or blanket the market with a chilling effect is lame.