What can you really say about this?
The first reply kind of sums it up for me: What a sad world we live in.
Patent law is so ridiculous, and basically designed as a way for a group of lawyers to ensure a nice living for themselves while the "big boys" feud back and forth about whatever products they create and sell.
You can look at this two ways, really, and both are equally valid, IMO.
On one hand, you can lament that fact that Apple has to funnel so much money into paying legal fees that could have been better spent working on the next "insanely great new thing" for consumers like us. (After all, if you take all the money they spent on lawyers and had Apple spend it, instead, on something like free MobileME and cloud computing services for all Mac and i-device owners? I bet it'd cover YEARS of ability to provide it.)
On the other hand? Seeing how many times Apple leveraged patent law to their advantage in the past? You could argue that turnabout is fair play, and Apple SHOULD have to pony up some big money to defend themselves, since they've instigated so much of it before.
All I know is, in today's world, it's practically a given that any sufficiently large company will have to play these games in a court of law, sooner or later. And IMHO, ALL of us wind up losers except for the attorneys -- because it's expensive for both parties fighting over it, AND more importantly, it never winds up improving things for the customer when it's all said and done.
