Heinlein came up with a "waterbed" for a few of his books (it was mentioned quite prominently in Stranger in a strange land) Later on a man called Charles Hall tried to patent his design, and he was denied the patent by the USPO on the grounds that Heinlein's description in Stranger in a strange land, and Double star constituted prior art.
It would be fascinating to see if this precedent is followed...
I still like the Donald Duck cartoon used as precedent for that method of raising a ship, personally. I think that someone linked to a previous HN discussion of it below.
As somebody already mentioned below, the case in question is based on a design patent. A design patent only protects the ornamental design of something not how something works.
A tablet shown in a movie is a perfectly fine and perfectly usable example of a publication of an ornamental design.
It appears to have a control panel with buttons along the bottom of the screen tilted at an angle. Does the iPad? No-one touches its screen that I noticed, but I'm not sufficiently motivated to sit through 2001 to find out for sure.
Samsung's theft of Apple's very specific decorative designs (witness their remote that looked EXACTLY like an iPhone 4) is so egregious that if it were, say, a nameless Chinese entrepreneur selling knockoff purses in Chinatown no-one would be especially surprised if their stock were seized and a few people imprisoned over it. This isn't, say, Ferrari suing Maserati for creating a coupe with four wheels, it's Ferrari suing Hyundai for creating a coupe that looks EXACTLY like the current model Ferrari. No offense to Hyundai -- they pay actual designers to design their ugly-ass cars.
Oh please, Microsoft Surface...how many years ago was that before your precious iPad? There is probably not a single thing that Apple designed that is not without precedent. It just looks that way to your infatuated eyes.
The 'exactly' part is especially funny, given that the tablets have a different screen size and aspect ratio, as was obvious when people looked at properly scaled photos side by side.
Seems as though you haven't read the complaint. This is another one of Apple's famous bullshit "look and feel" lawsuits. Hopefully, it will fail like all the others they've tried.
Heinlein came up with a "waterbed" for a few of his books (it was mentioned quite prominently in Stranger in a strange land) Later on a man called Charles Hall tried to patent his design, and he was denied the patent by the USPO on the grounds that Heinlein's description in Stranger in a strange land, and Double star constituted prior art.
It would be fascinating to see if this precedent is followed...