Thank you. You're correct, I've wondered why this isn't mentioned more often, and maybe that's why.
However even after realizing that, I personally still consider a design patent about rounded corners to be on the same level of B.S. as a software patent, and still stand by my conclusions. But I'd be interested to know why I shouldn't do that, and if you have more information I'm honestly all ears
You make it sound like Samsung was quietly doing their own thing and then were blindsided by a lawsuit from Apple. But actually after the iPhone was released Samsung deliberately went through it screen by screen and produced a 132-page report on what features and interface elements they should steal from the iPhone.
I don't have a great opinion of the patent industry in general but in this situation Samsung's behavior was pretty blatant and unethical (IMO), and went well beyond "rounded corners".
> But actually after the iPhone was released Samsung deliberately went through it screen by screen and produced a 132-page report on what features and interface elements they should steal from the iPhone.
Did you know competitive analysis is something that is frequently done across many industries? GM/Mercedes/Toyota are among the first customers to buy[1] their competitors latest models and they disassemble them to the last bolt to figure out/estimate materials, methods and costs per component, sub-assembly and unit level. I see nothing unethical or nefarious about that.
1. Often they pay companies like Munro & Associates (https://leandesign.com/) do the analysis on their behalf
Competitive analysis is different than cloning the look & feel of something. "They have a unified design style with very nice rounded corners throughout the OS, we should have our own unified design style with our own nice touches" is not the same thing as "we should copy their style wholesale". GM isn't making cars that look like Toyota's.
Competitive analysis is one thing, point for point copying of another company's user interface is unethical. Apple put in the R&D to make the iPhone interface more intuitive and easy to use compared to other phones at the time. Samsung copied Apple's homework.
Design patents are basically like trademarks. They're not meant to embody useful new inventions the way utility patents are, and they always involve a greater degree of subjectivity. Even if you believe Apple's iPhone design patents to have been too obvious and unoriginal to warrant protection, they aren't as an egregious perversion of the purpose of the law as the most notorious software patents.
