And let's face it - not a single consumer benefits from the two companies blocking each other's products from the market, or from the fact they're wasting money on this instead of on actually, you know, making products.

Let's hope the EC tears both companies a new one. I'm sick of this anti-consumer bull%$&#.

Apple's strategic aim is not to block anybody's products per se. Apple's aim is to retain differentiation of it's products through preventing what it sees as copying of elements of it's designs that it has patented or which it feels it owns.

It is surely essential for innovation that being innovative brings something other than fleeting advantage, something more than a momentary advantage that only lasts until your competitors can copy anything you have created or invented. Being innovative is difficult, costly and demanding. Innovation will only happen if it leads to some advantage.

Ipod and Iphone weren't popular because of innovation.

Having a big touchscreen instead of buttons isn't innovative by the way it is completely obvious.

AFAIK the Star Trek Tricorder had a big touchscreen back in 1966.

Have you ever used MP3 players from the time before the iPod came out? I have.

If it was completely obvious, why didn't anyone else think of bringing it to market in the way as the iPhone did?

Yes. iPod made it easier for normal people to put music on the mp3player. It changed nothing for me. I also had a harddisk mp3 player before the ipod.

Changes often occur because a device is used differently or a new technique becomes cheap enough.

If you want to use a device to listen to music, browse the web, have apps and be used as a phone how many choices do you have for formfactor?

Just because most phone vendors were being stupid doesn't make Apple brilliant.

It is surely essential for innovation that being innovative brings something other than fleeting advantage, something more than a momentary advantage that only lasts until your competitors can copy anything you have created or invented. Being innovative is difficult, costly and demanding. Innovation will only happen if it leads to some advantage.

I'm Ford, I make a car design, patent it, and bring it to market. You're Hyundai, you see my car and you make a very similar one who's design only faintly differs from mine. Since you didn't have to prototype the design like I did, you were able to cut R&D costs to a great margin because I essentially designed it for you. So when you take your car to market you're able to undercut my profits. I take you to court. Let's see who wins.

If it was completely obvious, why didn't anyone else think of bringing it to market in the way as the iPhone did?"
That alone does not merit any kind of protection, much less a 20year one. There are hundreds of innovations being brought into hundreds of markets ever year; that does not mean iPhone was something out of the ordinary except for the size of the market.

The CD player was patented in 1969. It reached the market in 1981. The delay was due to the fact that the hardware was too expensive to build any earlier.

Dick Tracy had a two way wrist radio back in 1946 and a wrist TV in 1964. back in the 1940s.

Someone had probably thought of some type of touchscreen mobile phone by the 1960s.

Sorry to break it to you, but innovation is not patentable by legal definition.

And please, please, please.... Hardware related patents are in a totally different universe to intangible IP.

Apple is the biggest company (by market cap) on the planet. It is the most valuable brand on the planet.

It makes the most profit of any other company on the planet in handsets, tables, computers, displays, music, etc. It has the best customer service (as voted by actual customers) for an untold number of years. It has the strongest customer loyalty (especially in mobile devices).

I could go on here.

Clearly those are indicators of a disaster waiting to happen.

They swap IP readily. They only sue over trademarks.

The LG Prada had a touchscreen before the iPhone.

Android began two years before iOS.

The iPod and Mac designs design were blatantly stolen from 1960s Braun catalogues.

The iPad is a direct copy of the 1987 Knight-Ridder concept tablet.

The iPhone is a copy of the LG Prada.

So hardware deserves protection, and software doesn't?

Innovative designs on a hardware level are valuable, but on the software level they aren't?

You're valued and appreciated as a hardware company, but you're dismissed as worthless as a software company?

With more and more innovations being built around software, rather than hardware, I think thats selling a lot of people short.

Total BS. There are demonstration videos of Android running a touchscreens GUI long before the iPhone was announced.

Don't be ridiculous...

FrogDesign developed the original Mac case. Jonathan ive designed the iPod case.

The Apple designs are blatant copies of designs by 1960s German designer Dieter Rams.

And being afraid to throw away a dead baby with the infected bathwater will only lead to more contamination.
(The dead baby is the software patent, infected water is the current system)