No but Apple's patent for rounded corners didn't help Samsung engineers from creating their devices...and yet Apple filed the patent and sued Samsung for patent infringement.
Caltech should be championed for trolling a troll.
It's unfortunate that this story has now been twisted into "Apple suing Samsung over rounded corners", when in actuality Samsung deliberately produced a 132-page report comparing the iPhone to their current phones at the time and pointed out hundreds of features and design elements they should steal from the iPhone user interface.
https://archive.org/details/436142-samsung-relative-evaluati...
If you read through the report it's pretty blatant and goes well beyond "rounded corners".
But that doesn't really matter, you can adopt concepts and designs from 3rd parties (including competitors) so long as the same is not protected.
The "rounded corners" was patented and infringement of the patent was a count on the lawsuit, and Samsung was found liable for infringing that patent.
What is unfortunate and "twisted" is claiming a research university is a patent troll. Research universities develop and patent new technology all the time, you could say its part of their business model, and historically they are happy to license their patents to commercial entities to take to market...very rarely do universities actually develop their new inventions for commercial purposes. Most would consider it a win-win to shift costs of development to universities, not universities being patent trolls.
Yes, the time and money Apple spent designing their devices saved Samsung quite a lot of money and effort when they had to design their own.
https://www.law360.com/articles/652442/dish-hughes-escape-so...
https://www.reuters.com/article/intuitivesurgical-lawsuit-id...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/sony-settles-digital-camera-la...
