You imply that Apple's design itself is innovative. That is exactly what the article disputes with a picture from July 2008. A simple tablet with just one button.
Anyone except Microsoft would have come up with just that.
It is innovative by definition, because nobody did it before.
If it's so simple, why didn't Samsung do it?
Paperclips seem like a obvious design that involves no innovation. Yet paperclips similar to what we use now weren't around until 1867, and the "modern" paperclip was patented in 1899 -- 30 years later.
I would argue the prior art for that is the iPod Touch which was out a year earlier, and probably conceived earlier than that. When I heard "iPad" rumors in 2009 the first thing I thought was "a big ipod touch." So what's to say these guys didn't see the pod touch and say "Yeah. That. But big"
That's fine any dandy, but I believe Apple is claiming a design patent specifically on the iPad. If we take the iPod touch as prior art, it still invalidates the iPad patent.
Fair enough. The patent actually shows a tablet that looks less like an iPad than it does a generic Tablet PC that one might have bought from Dell in 2004, though.
There were tablet PCs earlier. Were they usable? No. The point is, minor usability improvements aren't worthy of a patent. Just look at how bad the patent situation is, and how much of that is due to ridiculously silly patents.
Because nobody wanted a tablet until Apple told them they did. When there's no market for a device, you don't make and sell one simply because you can. Unless you're Steve Jobs, that is.
Anyone except Microsoft would have come up with just that.