One of my favorite lines used by people defending Samsung during their $1 billion legal beatdown from Apple was the claim that Apple doesn’t have a patent on glass rectangles with rounded corners. “You can’t patent the rectangle,” they would say.
Yeah, well Apple just did. Kind of.
After a review by a patent examiner on Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Apple an additional design patent for the iPad’s “ornamental design.” The design feature cited in US Patent D607,286 for a “Portable display device” pretty much appears to be a literal rounded rectangle.