You go on and post yourself happy on MacRumors; meanwhile Apple wins in the courts
FYI: Samsung did _not_ have any tablet in the year 2006. They had a photo frame. A photo frame is not a tablet, and I'm sure Apple doesn't mind if Samsung continues selling their photo frames.
The iPad is a tablet, while this is a photo frame, but it can store photos, music and movies, as well, so the similarities dont end at just looking the same.
Legally, it might not even matter if they are in different markets. I remember when Apple had to settle with Cisco for the name iPhone, even though Cisco was using the name for a completely different market than smartphones. So how can Apple put an injunction on the Galaxy Tab because it looks similar to the iPad, if both look like this product made by Samsung, no other, in 2006? Does Apple really own the look and feel of tablets then, or does Samsung?
Being similar is what defines an entire product category. Without some kind of similarity, we wouldnt have tablets wed have just tablet. We wouldnt have fridges. Wed just have fridge, and so on. Entire markets would be defined by just one unique product alone. That means there wouldnt be any direct competition. One company would have the monopoly over that product category in every market. Prices would be higher, and the progress for that type of product would be a lot slower, since there would be nobody offering a similar product. If everyone enforced their patents on all their competitors, and justice regarding this would be made swiftly, thats exactly the type of world we would live in. And all because the patent system is so broken, and doesnt account for how things work in the real business world.
Fortunately, for the most part, the business world doesnt work like that. Competitors copy each others features all the time and they dont even bother suing each other (even though they could, as long as they own the patents). This ends up making the progress of their products a lot faster. They *need* to stay always one step or two ahead of each other in different features, so people can still prefer them over the others. But they all copy the basic features and concepts from each other, and then they just compete on new innovations and differentiating factors. The prices also drop because everyone overs pretty similar products, and the quality keeps getting up. Consumers win.
But in some markets (tablet market) some competitors (Apple) will actually try to enforce their patents to block their competitors from even competing with them. The only reason that fantasy patent world I mentioned earlier doesnt really exist is because the patents are not enforced as much as they could be by companies. But Apple seems to be trying their best to make that patent fantasy world become real, and if they succeed, all customers will be at a loss for lack of choices for similar products. And that includes Apple customers, because everyone loses when theres less competition for a type of product.