Okay, you make some pretty good points and I'm not one to hold on to a belief that's wrong for egotistical reasons but I still have a couple of problems with your argument.
First, when you said "Right. All of them". To be clear, I know that all tablets are in a similar vein as the iPad these days. So why doesn't Apple sue all of them? Well I'm no dummy and I know this has a lot to do with trying to stamp out the competition but at the same time the rest of the tablets except the Samsung tablet in question are just different enough to give them some wiggle room. The Samsung tablet, when viewed next to an iPad is so similar that a layperson could easily mistake them as the same and not know the difference until they inspect it further.
I didn't know the author designed a similar tablet previously. But his case could have been a coincidence. We all know that just because design decisions are obvious not every company will follow the rules of design. It's hard to say that the iPad design is obvious unless you actually have working products on the market. Concepts change before being massed produced and a differently designed tablet that was as successful as the iPad could have become the standard and we'd be arguing about whether Apple copied LG's design or Sony's had they come out with such a tablet first.
Approaching this subject from a legal perspective is the wrong way to go. There's this obvious (I hate to have to use that word I'm this context) gray area between "how else do you design such a product" and "that design is just a rip off". Look at the tablets side by side. I can't imagine any regular consumer being able to immediately spot the difference. They look almost exactly alike in a way no other tablet does. There's an aspect of this that can't be proven in court but is plain as day to anyone else and that's where I'm approaching this from. It's like Samsung intentionally ripped off the iPad because they knew they couldn't compete so instead tried to piggyback off people who think the closer it looks to an iPad the better it is as a less expensive alternative. But despite how much anyone knows in these gray areas you can't prove it in court so they're forced to use patents as a tool to stop the rip offs.
First, when you said "Right. All of them". To be clear, I know that all tablets are in a similar vein as the iPad these days. So why doesn't Apple sue all of them? Well I'm no dummy and I know this has a lot to do with trying to stamp out the competition but at the same time the rest of the tablets except the Samsung tablet in question are just different enough to give them some wiggle room. The Samsung tablet, when viewed next to an iPad is so similar that a layperson could easily mistake them as the same and not know the difference until they inspect it further.
I didn't know the author designed a similar tablet previously. But his case could have been a coincidence. We all know that just because design decisions are obvious not every company will follow the rules of design. It's hard to say that the iPad design is obvious unless you actually have working products on the market. Concepts change before being massed produced and a differently designed tablet that was as successful as the iPad could have become the standard and we'd be arguing about whether Apple copied LG's design or Sony's had they come out with such a tablet first.
Approaching this subject from a legal perspective is the wrong way to go. There's this obvious (I hate to have to use that word I'm this context) gray area between "how else do you design such a product" and "that design is just a rip off". Look at the tablets side by side. I can't imagine any regular consumer being able to immediately spot the difference. They look almost exactly alike in a way no other tablet does. There's an aspect of this that can't be proven in court but is plain as day to anyone else and that's where I'm approaching this from. It's like Samsung intentionally ripped off the iPad because they knew they couldn't compete so instead tried to piggyback off people who think the closer it looks to an iPad the better it is as a less expensive alternative. But despite how much anyone knows in these gray areas you can't prove it in court so they're forced to use patents as a tool to stop the rip offs.