My thoughts on the subject, I've read quite a bit about this and the whole mobile industry has pissed me off.
The whole American patent system is FUBAR and imo it's nailed a new niche market for laywers to make a fortune by keeping themselves in a job and 'forcing' companies to sue each other.
Samsung products barely resemble the Apples but I can sort of if I squint A LOT see a similarity, Apple are just scared that someone is competing quite well. Apple bring out the ipad2 which is f@cking thin, Samsung outdo them BUT it takes along time to design a product and Samsung couldn't have got a slimmer tablet out that quick. Jules, that pic comparing the SGS ui and iphone ui is of the home screen filled with apps, the only similarity I can see if the green phone icon. Lots of phones have used green phone icons on the left hand side of the phone, even those with real buttons. Hardly an Apple innovation.
Slick is correct and Apple were found to have distorted the image of the SGT and the EU wide ban was temporary lifted, this is also an EU ban which was authorised by some 2bit poxy German court that had NO powers to force a EU wide ban, so the EU ban was completely removed and it's only enforced in Germany and even then I think it's not the whole of Germany and only the jurisdiction the court can enforce it's powaz.
Google have just bought Motorola Mobility, which secures them 17,000 current patents and a further 7,000 pending patents and they say they'll only use to defend Android and it's OEM partners, which is fair enough. They did lie about and continue to lie about Apple and Microsoft being out to destroy Android, a Micosoft exec put up a blog with a copy of the emails between MS and G, where G declined the offer of being in on the patent bids with the big boys. Google lost a load of +1's from me.
Apple steal a bunch of features from Android for iOS5 and it gets hailed as revolutionary, amazing, innovative... Give me strength Apple, you DARE copy Android then go about suing competitors for 'copying' you? pfft, that is beyond lame.
My beloved HTC are not being too naughty, and have bought some companies for their patents to defend against Apple. Their big buy out was S3 which had a load of patents which they couldn't defend because they had no money. HTC have money.
BT owned a patent in the US (and other countries) for the links you use on ALL web pages, this was overturned, like many of these patent claims should be.
Nokia? They'll be bought by Microsoft soon enough, they've already dumped Symbian and MeeGo for Win Phone7 and the current top dog of Nokia are ex-Microsoft exec's.
RIM. they may be sitting on a pile of cash, but they're loosing market share quicker than diarrhoea can fly out your arse. Even at work lots of clients have moved to iphone/Android.
haha yeah after further googling it appears they are out! BB need to update there site 
Typical BB, always behind even with their own product launches
I just want them all to cross license their patents, fire the majority of the patent lawyers and get on with making great devices.
