I agree that Samsung has gone overboard with regards to the packaging. However I feel that a design patent on a tablet form factor is not the best idea. Perhaps

I agree that Samsung has gone overboard with regards to the packaging. However I feel that a design patent on a tablet form factor is not the best idea. Perhaps it works for fashion designers, and I am not denying that there is creativity in designing hardware devices. However, as I look at all the various LCD monitors that are around the office right now, I can't help but think about what would happen if there was originally a design patent on the form factor of a monitor. They all seem to have relatively similar: - border widths - button placements - rounding of corners - status lights and their positions The same could be said for keyboards, computer towers, even many laptops. There is probably a finite number of practical design available when building a touch screen tablet. If all of them were to be patented, then nobody could build a reasonable tablet. In response to your second point about the scrolling: It may well be true that the scrolling implementation was non-obvious. Based on your comments, I would agree that this particular aspect is perhaps non-obvious. I'm just worried about the number of patents being asserted, and that it is highly unlikely that all of them are non-obvious, especially based on the coverage I have read. It seems more likely that Apple hit the big one with the iPhone by building incrementally on existing technologies and techniques, then adding some nice, non-obvious features, rather than building a device so chock full of non-obvious ideas that nobody else would have developed something which was somewhat similar to what we now think of as a smart phone using similar technology. I don't think the few non-obvious ideas, nor the fact that they brought together existing technologies should be the basis for court fights and attempts to block importation of competitors products. I understand that this was a relatively narrow case, against Samsung and not Android in general, but it seems pretty clear to me that this it is a business decision by Apple to attempt to reduce competition through the courts.