And even if it were true it seems like Apple never had a problem to keep selling their devices while the evil copiers were swarming the market. Hardly a good example of useful patent protection.
It's not like there is prior art for most of the touch patents with the diamond touch. The patents are also as absurd as patenting the double click. For any touch device, we want to maximize touch area. To do that, a square is best. A square doesn't fit well in pockets so a rectangle is better for a phone. It's also very uncomfortable to have a rectangle with sharp edges in your pocket. But wait... we don't have the freedom to design something useful, Apple did that first!
What really ticks me off is that touch based phones were coming with or without Apple as the technology was becoming cheap enough. The only difference is that Apple did it first and they did it well (few companies do anything well). They didn't really invent much in the process but combined many existing concepts into an awesome product. What scares me is that most of these patents are obvious and completly ridiculous and shouldn't be grounds for granting Apple a monopoly on smartphones.