I'm really tired of people calling Apple an innovative company. Apple is a company that polishes existing ideas to a point beyond most other companies, and they are damn good at this. Apple is also routinely rewarded for their skills by being the first to introduce a product in category X that is truly enjoyable to use. Is that not good enough?

As I understand it, the patent system was designed to protect individual inventors and researchers from companies like Apple, who excel at mass-production and marketing. Please correct me if I'm wrong though.