"Why exactly does the biggest company in the industry need to be "protected"? Making fashionable-looking hardware and putting together some obvious and old ideas (eg., pinch to zoom) is not the same as 'investing in innovation'"I read comments like this, and all my brain sees is: "WAAAH!"
Companies don't give up their rights to legal protection once they get to a size that the internet thinks is "too big". And that's a great thing -- it's how small companies become large companies without being killed by nasty parasites who do nothing but copy good products to eat away at profit margins.
As for the argument that Apple didn't do anything innovative: take a walk, please. Unless you're too young to remember the world of cellphones in 2007, you can't make a reasonable claim that there was no innovation in what they did with the iPhone. Lots of people want to post hoc rationalize the fact that the market has been flooded with iPhone-esque devices by calling it "innovation" (as if lower prices were somehow innovative). But I was there, and I remember the phone I had before I had an iPhone: It flipped open. It had a keyboard. It barely fit in my pocket, and had a tiny, low-resolution screen. I had to buy an expensive, custom headphone to listen to music.
Rationalize whatever you like, but Apple revolutionized the cellphone market, and they deserve the spoils of their risk-taking. If this is how they do that within the confines of the current legal system, so be it. They deserve to win.