I'll never understand why Apple feel the need to act as a patent troll. Their brand is so powerful they could take any electronic device, slap their logo on it and sell it to a huge amount of people at much more profit margin than most companies that make functional things can get away with.
Maybe this is just to Apple's patent lawyers what pointless UI redesigns is to frontend devs. Gotta do something.
I'd hazard a guess this may be primarily for protection from patent trolls and as a mitigation for accidental patent violation. It's likely cheaper to gratuitously patent than risk ceasing production or sale of products.
