So, Let me get this straight. Apple spent billions of dollars researching the best interface for mobile devices and patented their findings. Those methods of interacting with a mobile device became so popular, Google illegally integrated them in its inferior Android operating system.

There’s some blatant fanboyism going on here. It’s not like Apple doesn’t take good ideas from Android. In fact, they borrowed the whole notion of a notification area pretty much verbatim. Here’s an excerpt from CNet’s iOS 5 article:

So how closely does the iOS 5 notification center mirror Android? The biggest similarities are two-fold. There’s the action to pull down a tray that displays all of your notifications. But Android’s has a task bar that shows not just that you have an alert, but also the type of message you missed, with separate tiny icons that let you easily identify an incoming text, a missed call, a new voice mail, and so on. As with iOS 5, you can clear them all at once, but not individually.

Android also originated the notification banner that shows you up top when you have a new message. Apple made theirs larger and more customizable, but Apple didn’t invent the convention. (Reminder: Android didn’t invent all its tools and visuals either. Companies have long been “borrowing” rivals’ ideas.)

The Android notification system is patented, though I’m not sure if the patent has been issued yet. An excellent piece by David Ruddock over on Android Police has more details.