Or they could design a new cable? Apple are asking them to change a whole load of things - colour, size, proportionality etc. Why not just ask them to change t

Or they could design a new cable? Apple are asking them to change a whole load of things - colour, size, proportionality etc. Why not just ask them to change the cable? Let's put it the other way - if someone came out and said they had a patent on some part of Apple's power cable - be it a design patent or a technology one - would you say that Apple would have to stop selling iPads? Or just stop selling those particular cables, and design around it? For a similar case, look at the recent Doom 3 source code release. John Carmack had to remove the code for Carmack's Reverse because it infringed a Creative Labs patent (which had been licensed specifically to id, not to outside developers). He didn't have to remove the whole code base, just the one bit that actually infringed.