I don't know enough to truly defend Apple's actions, but given that they started working on the iPad 10 years ago, and even when it was announced no one could figure out why it was a good idea until they used one... Apple has likely poured years and buckets of money into R&D full of trial and error, like a pharma company trying to hit on a chemical formula, and a good amount of that work can be copied for free by competitors in the absence of patent protection. In that way, what Apple is seeking is exactly what patents are supposed to provide.

For example, I still remember how incredibly novel it was to use a web browser on an iPhone and be able to zoom in to click on links, double-tap, etc. This isn't a superficial feature either, as it required a beefy graphics chip. Putting a powerful GPU in a phone and using it to zoom in on web pages and PDFs may have been as innovative as putting a hard drive, and wheel, and a graphical LCD together to make the iPod.

On the other hand, maybe "inventing" a form factor or a user interface paradigm and getting exclusive rights to it is as preposterous as it sounds, and the ghost of Steve Jobs should be content that Apple used its prescience to buy up all the high-res LCD panels. They have capitalized on their innovation quite well.

I do see Android as basically a piece-by-piece copy of the iPhone. I'd trust Google to build a JVM and throw together an API, and not much further.