I think it's bad if the average consumer cannot tell the difference between an Apple product and a Samsung product. Right now Samsung is trying hard to look like a cheaper apple product -- they have the same "white" apple stores with an equivalent genius bar (smart tutors), and they even reuse apple icons at their physical store wall paper (safari icons, etc). Their boxes and cables are identical to Apple's, they made their onscreen keyboard identical (same white/blue style -- even the shading is identical). Some of Samsung's products will even fit in 3rd party Apple addons that make use of the 30 pin dock.

I honestly don't think a new consumer will be able to easily differentiate between the 2 products. My mom calls everything an ipad even if it's not -- I don't think she would know that she's buying a galaxy tablet and not an ipad.

I don't think copying drives innovation. If cloning products drove innovation, we'd see a ton of China companies making innovative products, but most of them just clone some website in the US, slap on a few features, and that's it.

The China company that cloned Impactjs pixel-per-pixel did not provide anything additional other than providing the same service at half the price.

If Samsung wins here, it's basically setting a precedent for future companies to clone anything successful. We'll probably see a lot more Chinese companies cloning YC startups without worrying about lawsuits.