[Joeri]

The argument is intentionally silly to point out how it's a silly argument in the other direction as well.

Nothing gets designed in a vacuum. If you google around a bit you can find flatscreen tv's from 2002 that look like big ipads, well before apple started designing their tablets. Watt didn't invent the steam engine, he just had a really good idea how someone else's steam engine could be improved while repairing it. Bosch didn't invent electric ignition for cars, he just transplanted the idea from Volta's glass pistol, whose spark in turn was delivered by Volta's "pile" (battery), the idea of which was inspired by Volta's friend who noticed that when he dissected frogs sometimes the frog's legs would jump right off the plate by the generated currents from the scalpel interacting with the metal base. The iphone and ipad are brilliantly executed, but to pretend that they were invented in a vacuum does a disservice to designers and inventors everywhere.

But just as Apple are being silly by pretending they design in a vacuum, Samsung are silly for pretending they didn't rip off the iphone. I think they would have sold more phones if they hadn't actually (I know for me it was a reason not to get a samsung phone, even though I eventually did.) I think the silliness on both sides is why the courts are starting to hand down these silly rulings.