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Everything you talk about pre-iPhone are also irrelevencies as prior art. . . if they do not do what the iPhone did

If this is all irrelevant then why are you the one who posted the irrelevant picture showing cell phones before the iPhone (minus those that which were rectangular with rounded corners) and cell phones after the iPhone (minus flip phones, blackberries, and other designs still being made that were not rectangular with rounded corners)? The original iPhone... like just about everything else that Apple has come out before and since is almost always an evolution of designs and functions that other developers came up with previously.

Apple is very, very good at identifying great features that others have come up with and combining them into a product that is user friendly adding a little window dressing and then doing what they are the very best at... marketing. I admire what they do very much. However, this is an evolutionary process.

You and I both know that Apple did not come up with multi-touch capacitive screens. They were out there long before the iPhone. Other manufacturers such as HTC who came out with the phones that the iPhone evolved from chose resistive screens largely because with the small LCD screens that were affordable years before the iPhone came out resistive input had key advantages.

As screens and capacitive touch control evolved it was only a matter of time before someone came to market with a device that used the technologies. It was certainly not a revolutionary development that only Apple had been considering. To claim that Apple was the first to think of such a thing is outrageous. Microsoft, Mitsubishi and others were working on multi-touch displays years before the iPhone was in development. Many of Apples patents on “gestures” etc. are travesties at least as bad as their claim on a rectangle with rounded corners. And quibbling over a button or two or three at the bottom of the device... absolutely ridiculous. That is strictly aesthetics and has just about nothing to do with anything.

I do appreciate that you have admitted that “Apple always spoke in suit about how the Samsung products were intended to look like Apple’s products.” To try and claim that a Samsung S3 could be mistaken for an iPhone is ridiculous and I am happy that on appeal this has been thrown out.

then you say, “they do not do what the iPhone did with a multi-touch capacitance touch screen.” Obviously not... they did pretty much exactly the same thing that an iPhone did only without a multi-touch capacitance touch screen. Good for Apple, they bought a screen and used it they way the designer of the screen envisioned it to be used. Then they marketed and developed it in a way that made lots of people decide they wanted it. Again good for Apple, but it is just more of the same evolutionary process that defines nearly all Apple designs.

I admire your knowledge and enthusiasm for Apple products. You are a great resource here. I do disagree with some of your characterizations of me, but I especially reject your defense of Apple’s hired goon legal department. They are the biggest bullies in the tech sector and are responsible for the stifling of much innovation.

Show me all the phones before the iPhone that were monolithic phones with a large screen, no keyboards, and almost all controls on the screen operated by a finger. Go ahead. . . find them. The point is that there was a sea change in phone design that happened BECAUSE of the iPhone. . . not any other phone made that kind of change. All the phones before the iPhone did not make that kind of impact on design of phones.

You can dance all you like about this feature and that feature, but it is the totality of the design you keep ignoring that brought that sea change about. . . the design that WORKED so differently from all previous cellular phones, smart and not-so-smart.

So go ahead, find all those slab phones that were so similar to the iPhone you claim pre-dated the iPhone . . . show me. You've pointed to one. a resistance screen phone that required a stylus. . . and would not work without said stylus. . . and had EIGHT buttons to maneuver around the phone, on the face. NOT anything like the iPhone at all, or the vast majority of phones post iPhone. Where are the single screen minimal button phones pre-iPhone. PLEASE.

You and I both know that Apple did not come up with multi-touch capacitive screens. . . To claim that Apple was the first to think of such a thing is outrageous.

You keep claiming this, but it is NOT true. Apple does indeed hold the patents on the multi-touch capacitance screens that WORK. You can claim that they do not, but making them actually work is what Apple accomplished. I posted the patents not too long ago. . . and the challenges that were denied and the proofs of why the challenges were denied. I am getting TIRED of arguing this falsehood.

Others were working on it, but they could NOT make their solutions work reliably to use on any devices except for HUGE X.Y choice screens. . . and then not for multi-touch. They randomized too easily. Apple then worked years on devising ways to determine how to decipher what was a scrolling motion and what was a mere accidental movement of a finger to allow the system to be stable. They also had to work to determine the CENTER of the touch of a broad touch of a finger to localize it. IT was not trivial or obvious as you seem to think. THAT was why Apple and it's engineers got the patent.

LG KE-850 Prada

In fact, the only capacitance touch phone that made it to market before the iPhone, was a SINGLE TOUCH phone, the LG-KE850 made for Prada, announced officially in February 2007, one month after Apple announced and demonstrated the multi-touch Apple iPhone, which Apple had been working on for four years. . . and had filed preliminary patents on in 2004. LG sold the Prada in Europe in May of 2007, one month before the iPhone went on sale in June of 2007. . . but it was only a feature phone, not a smartphone, but it does hold the honor of being the first capacitance touch phone. It was just not a multi-touch screen. It had no scrolling, and merely had a simple X,Y grid touch system.

To try and claim that a Samsung S3 could be mistaken for an iPhone is ridiculous and I am happy that on appeal this has been thrown out.

It is not ridiculous. . . in fact this image shows it is very difficult to tell them apart:

Remember, that under Design patents, extra buttons or names do not make a difference. Interestingly, had this case been heard in any other appellate district than the Ninth Circus Court of Schlemiels, it could not have been reversed. Only in the Ninth, which is the case law the US District Court in Washington DC used, do they hold such a strict rule that Design patents have to have no discernible utility functions at all to be protectable under a Design Patent. As there was case law in the Ninth Circus to that extent, the DC appellate court reversed, because Samsung claimed the shape of the corners facilitated slipping the phone into pockets which a sharp corner would not. . . and the inset bezel prevented the glass from striking the ground first and shattering. This made them not merely ornamental, but functional and ergo, not protectable by a Design patent. However, the overall utility patent of the iPhone ALSO includes those features, and may be extended to cover in a revisit of the trial.