This isn't a question about Apple owning rounded rectangles - unless they happen to be phones and tablets. This rounded rectangle thing has gotten a little out of hand. It's easy to see why Samsung has framed it in this manner; because, of course, Apple couldn't 'own a rectangle with rounded corners', how absurd! Does that mean Apple owns tv remote controls, or keyboards or all the other rectangles with rounded corners on them?!
But that's a false argument and analogy. Apple is not going after keyboards, tv remotes, etc. They are going after Samsung's copied phones and tablets. It's that simple and to dream up analogies is to try to derail the real issue.
However, if some still feel that Samsung is an inventive company that would never outright steal any ideas, all you have to do is look at some of these examples:
App store icons:
http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Samsung-Mo...
Black iphone cables:
http://cdn.mactrast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Samsung-A...
Black iphone square charger:
http://site.accessorygeeks.com/yswimages/samsung-micro-usb-d...
These are just a few things but it's pretty clear that Samsung has no problem just copying outright. I don't think they're going to win this trial and I don't think Apple is going to own all black rectangles.
None.
At all.
So why is it protected by a patent?
In an event, speaking as someone who actually used Xerox's systems years after the Mac shipped, it was hugely inferior in all important respects to the original Mac UI -- any superficial similarities notwithstanding. Again, see Alan Kay's comment.
This is new to me, cite? Obviously doing that would amount to cut and dry copyright violation, and Apple would be well within its rights to demand the in-store displays be removed.
But this isn't a spit about clip art. They're claiming ownership of an increasingly nebulous idea of a "tablet" (it seems it's no longer just about the narrow design patent, or about the size, or aspect ratio, or curved corners). That's a different thing, and not at all related to what you're talking about.
Last I checked the App Store and Safari were not available on Android. In fairness its a store within a store so the Samsung might not have been directly responsible.
I hardly think that reliability is an invention.
The article loses credibility when it suggests that the invention of the GUI stops at Xerox, when Apple invented (among many other things) drag and drop, overlapping windows, a practical mouse (that could track diagonally, didn't break down, and did more with one button than xerox did with three).
But what would I know?
"The Macintosh was the first computer worth criticizing." Alan Kay
I'm totally on board with apple not owning rounded rectangles, but Samsung's copying of Apple has extended to literally using Apple's UI graphics in store displays.