I couldn't help to leave a quick comment, but I thought I would share my view in my blog as well:
For the "did Samsung copy Apple?" question, I look at this from an abstract level: Consider A and B are two students taking an exam with only one question (consider the exam is about solving consumer problems). They both got stuck at the question. A took it on by himself, thought really hard, made a few mistakes, and scored 80% on that exam. At the exam, B constructed a few thoughts, but rejected all his ideas. (Assume) he had an opportunity of checking on A's answer before the end of the exam ("looked over the should"), and he liked A's approach of the problem (before A finished the answer). B continued to solve the problem based on A's idea, but added his thoughts to complete the answer. B scored 95% on that exam.
In the above scenario, I think both Apple and Android fanboys would agree that B cheated A during the exam. However, if one ONLY compares the scores, no one would believe B cheated on A at the exam because B had a higher score! But sometimes, science or engineering solutions only takes one simple idea to make a huge difference. Everyone who's taken an exam had that "Oh, aha" or "Duh!" moment - you only need a "tip" or a "reminder" to get a complex puzzle solved.
Although Samsung offers more phones to consumers than Apple, most of their touchscreen phones and pads can come out from a single platform. Given Samsung's engineering resources, they literally can make hundreds of phone models per year, leveraging a single platform seed (e.g. "cheated") - adding buttons, changing button sizes and positions, changing screen sizes and display technologies, etc. But the originality remains in single digit.
Comparing Apple's iPad vs. Samsung's Galaxy Tab, the simple home button, the USB connector and charger, the tight software interaction between Apps...it only takes a few tweaks to improve and make products intuitive for the end user. Yet, these ideas take years of thoughts and experiments. Apple might have been cooking some prototypes for years. When they finally "got it" (as Steve Jobs said), Samsung and other mobile phone OEMs just take the ideas as is.
Granted, I must note that the South Korean market was way ahead of the U.S. for smart phones. Touchscreen phones were common (resistive-technology) and existed long before the iPhone was introduced. However, the hardware was still cumbersome and the software was not as intuitive (e.g. slide to unlock, and click on a phone number in an email to dial, etc.). Apple solved these user issues with a companion industrial design that's unique. I also should add that Samsung never had a "pad" before the iPad was launched, so no one should argue that the "pad" was Apple's idea.
Most importantly, arguing about a patent or an intuition is not about the exact screen size or the thickness of the phone, it's about how the solutions approach the problems and solves them. Just like the exam scenario I presented above.
Did Samsung copy Apple's industrial design? I believe so - they added own thoughts, made more phones, perhaps scored higher in the exam, but they copied and cheated on the originality nevertheless.
