"promote more original design"
Surely, all this will do is force organisations to over-design products in the future once a close approximation of the 'ideal' standard is achieved.
What would happen if the beverage industry had gone down this route? Drinks cans would all have to be different shapes and sizes to prevent litigation. In this example, the ubiquitous design of the drinks can remains the way it is as it is accepted as the best size and shape for numerous reasons. It may not turn out to be the BEST design for a soft drinks repository, but that doesn't prevent R&D companies from trying to better it, but the key thing here is that it also doesn't force every organisation to redesign their can so as to appease the litigation-trolls.
I see the ruling as stifling organisations as they compete to come out with unique and patentable designs for the sake of doing so which will cost more in R&D which ultimately will be passed down to the consumer whom may then be offered substandard formfactor designs to attain a device with a particular operating system.
I'm not advocating being unable to patent innovative ideas, or being unable to protect IP rights for operating system features but at the same time I find it petty that a rectangle with curved edges can be patentable.
Luckily mother-nature doesn't work that way or we'd all have noses and eyes in different places with significantly different form factors despite a commonly accepted optimal feature set that most people share.......
