iOS application developers must read and sign a contract, where I found this clause:
"15.5 Independent Development. Nothing in this Agreement will impair Apple's right to develop, acquire, license, market, promote, or distribute products or technologies that perform the same or similar functions as, or otherwise compete with, Applications, Licensed Applications or any other products or technologies that You may develop, produce, market, or distribute."
Fantastic deal... for Apple.
Without that, some people would think very hard what software they would expect Apple to add to the iPhone or iPad, write a very primitive version of that software, and then sue Apple if Apple created the software these people expected Apple to create.
Like I might have expected that Apple will port Keynote to the iPad, and could have written some simple presentation software, and tried to extract money from Apple when Keynote is released. It also means the author of the first fart application cannot sue Apple for allowing more fart applications on the store.
Because fair use doesn't mean "some guy on the Internet thinks it's fair", but
falling under Section 107. It is clear that Macrumors' use falls under one or more categories of the 1961 report, but it isn't so clear that Apple's does. The resident US patent lawyer will be able to chime in with a better informed opinion, of course. What's more likely is an argument based on the extent to which a UI can be copyrighted (which, as Apple found out in the early '90s, was not "as much as Apple would like", but the loss was on trying to copyright UI concepts rather than specific depictions).
I checked the criteria on Wikipedia, and according to those criteria Apple looks reasonably good. First, what Apple has copied is minimal. If you take the screenshot, remove the items that were originally created by Apple (iPhone itself, scroll wheel, some of the icons), and remove the items that Apple didn't copy (all the nicely designed bits), then there is very little left. The "copyrighted work" is the whole application, not a screen shot, so it is a very tiny part of the application that was copied.
Second, it seems that copying for the purpose of creating new IP indicates fair use, which would mean that copying an image for the creation of a patent application would tend to be fair use. I might got that wrong, I'll accept someone making a reasonable argument why this view is wrong.
Third, there is the question how the copy affects the copyright holder financially. If I made copies of a video game and sold them, that would obviously have a strong effect on the copyright holder; those who get a copy wouldn't by the video game. In this case, it seems absurd to think that anyone reading the patent application would be so pleased with Apple's drawing that they don't buy the app; would anyone say "no, I don't buy the app, I look at the drawing in Apple's patent instead"? If I wrote an application and copied that design, that would cost these developers sales and money; Apple using a drawing in a patent doesn't cost them sales and money.
