There are great examples of innovative products that are the result of not copying another -- see the windows & palm phones. I don't believe that innovation comes from cloning -- it only helps that business stay alive for a longer period of time, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. The examples of emulation you provide are significantly less blatant than the way Samsung copies Apple. Samsung even uses Apple icons as part of their wallpaper at their own "white" brick & mortar stores. Even when products emulate one another, it's usually possible for the end consumer to differentiate between the two, however Samsung has gone an extra step to make it difficult.

I'm not sure I understand why you think the trial was unfair -- it was a jury who made this decision, and the jury consisted of untechnical people who would be the right types of people to make this decision. If the average Joe thinks that the Toyota is the Ford, then I think it goes beyond the line of emulation.

I would say HTC emulates Apple products, but does not clone the same way Samsung clones. For example, the boxes for HTC phones look nothing like Apple's, and the connector is the same micro usb everyone is familiar with. Samsung goes the extra step to make sure their brick and mortar store, the boxes, the connector, the interfaces, the keyboard, the genius bar, the physical phone, etc are all indistinguishable from Apple. I don't understand why Samsung would have to make their brick & mortar stores identical to Apple, and even have the same style of genius bar inside -- that's going an extra step to make a product identical. In the countries where the name "genius bar" is not a registered trademark, Samsung actually uses that exact name. For the countries that have the registered trademark, they call them smart tutors. It's crazy how deep the copying goes.

My hunch is that ethics in that region are a bit more "loose" than they are here. It's perfectly okay to butt-in line there, or cheat in certain situations. When I was there, I'd stand in line at the hotel like a typical westerner (even though I'm chinese) only to have people butt in front me every 5 minutes. Eventually I just forced my way in front of the line to speak to the receptionist. I asked why they butt in front of me and they replied "you let me". Old people there are even less respectful, they just don't care you exist. All of my relatives who went to school in china lied about their age so they would have an advantage by starting at a lower grade level than the proper age. I've been told this happens in Korea and Japan as well.

When does a company go beyond emulation and into cloning? Would you say something like this is okay: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4426835 ?