Quit hating and read the stuff gang
The question is simple - was this a turning point in the use of an existing technology - touch screens - by implementing new rules/standards on how to use that technology. The Patent officer says it looks like it - and yes the courts will decide. Apple has merely locked in that they had these ideas on how to take the technology on a new route and pegged their claim just like a gold prospector. That pegging stops someone else from holding them to ransom by counter claiming the idea (common in IT circles) and it safeguards the huge development dollars that companies plough into new products. Apple was recently sued over alleged infringement of some things that iPhone uses - no one is immune from claim jumping.
Apple as an inventor? I think it is more Apple as an innovator. iPhone and iPad are not new ideas - phones and tablets existed - it is the 'how' and logic that goes with it that changed the landscape and built huge new industries. Others could have done this but in this case Apple did. Now everywhere I go there are iPads and iPhones and the queue to get one is miles long. And lots of look-alikes are out there making other folks money and creating utility and jobs.
The amount of stuff out there that looks like an Apple Clone is enormous and if Apple were really that litigious and stifling, those clones wouldn't exist. No, a stylus is nothing like using one or more fingers in twirling and other motions to define an agreed end result. We need agreed standards or Ctrl C would be all sorts of different things on different applications. Come to think of it MS wandered off from quite a lot of those primordial standards some time back when they were already well established - like the Shift Ctrl C for para center they made Shift Ctrl E .... Oh well...
Incidentally to the rant on "Little Apple versus the mighty Microsoft = lost battle" first it wasn't a war, and as Apple now has a market capitalization bigger than MS and Google combined, doesn't look to me like little Apple lost anything. The winners are all of us when the creatives in all companies come up with great ideas and build new markets with them.
