[rayiner]

So there are two kinds of patents we're talking about here. One is a utility patent, the other is a design patent. Most of the patents in Apple's suit against Samsung are design patents. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent#Comparison_to_uti...

The purpose of a design patent isn't to protect a novel invention that took tons of R&D to develop. Rather it straddles the gap between patent law and trademark law. The purpose is to protect the functional aesthetic of a product.

They are two very different things. A a feature protected by a design patent is supposed to have no functional utility. If e.g. research showed that the "bounce back" feature had the optimal visual feedback in clinical testing, that would actually go to invalidating the patent. The reason they are protected is precisely because they are so arbitrary. There is no need to use something like the "bounce back" feature other than to copy your competitor.

[nitrogen]

I believe the bounce-back patent used against Samsung was a utility patent.

[rayiner]

That's what I get for quick googling instead of reading the court docs. It doesn't really help that most of the sites reporting the suit use "design patent" and "utility patent" interchangeably. :(