And the Prada phone. And Jil Sander's clothing. And those stoves with entirely flat surfaces rather than pop out heating elements. And anything made by Dieter Rams for Braun.

Perhaps Samsung is following modern design techniques, many of which pre-date Apple, despite being popularized in the computing world by Apple.

If you put money and effort to your R&D, you will try to protect yourself as well.

If you spend millions of dollars on R&D to discover that LCDs are rectangular and that rounded corners hurt less, I don't think you deserve protection.

Prada Phone vs iPhone: They have different buttons. They have different bevel. They use different materials. They have completely different UI. They have completely different feature-sets (expansion/connections/cameras/tech stacks). And no copying was possible because they were announced 30 days apart.

Samsung tablets vs iPad: Same buttons. Same bevel. Same material. Mirrored UI. A clear an blatant copy to confuse consumers.

A little too late to reply but: CrunchPad was 2 years before iPad.

I'm not sure how you can read that article and decide Apple is the reasonable party.