Business is war
Microsoft / Apple was a copyright case based on "look and feel", not a patent case. But Sculley had licensed MS to use Mac GUI elements for Windows 1.0. The case failed because of this prior license and because look and feel is not copyrightable. So in future it's down to specific, nitty-gritty patents (not copyright) if you want to protect your designs. So we have patent wars.
Apple runs its business in a particular way, which allows it to move its customers forward over the long term, but requires a protected space in which to function. What they do is very different to simply making one or two gadgets. HTC and Samsung are gadget makers, in that they have no long term plan or structure, and design their products for a market environment over which they have no control. It's Apple who broke the power of the carriers with a spectacularly innovative product, leveraging government-mandated inter-carrier competition to create a direct relationship with users.
HTC made reasonably popular smartphones long before Apple, but now they all look just like iPhones. There is no doubt they, like Samsung, copied flagrantly. Apple has to protect the space in which it operates.
Bill Gates and Microsoft pushed tablet computers for a decade. Despite monopoly power, they were unable to make significant sales. It's quite obvious Apple didn't copy these tablets, and has no monopoly, but iPad is a huge success, which everyone is copying. Apple's method of working has repeatedly enabled it to rescue technologies that were going nowhere and bring them into the mainstream (eg USB, WiFi).
Apple is effectively the industry's first farmer; the others are hunters who simply exploit the market environment. They will kill the farmer and steal the contents of his barn if they can. Just as farming was the way forward, allowing culture and civilisation to become what it is, the way Apple does business is necessary for similar progress in the wired world. So far, no-one else has shown the required commitment to give up hunting for farming. But they will, because in the end, farming leaves no space for hunters.