Is the Apple vs HTC lawsuit really a big deal?

One of the big stories in the past few weeks has been the Apple versus
HTC lawsuit. Many people have been slamming Apple because of this. I don't see why that is. Apple is just protecting its patents and its rights. If HTC had sued
Apple no one would have said HTC was in the wrong.

I mean big companies are suing each other all the time. Nokia is suing Apple right now. So I don't think it's any big deal. One of the patents Apple is suing HTC for is the 849 patent, entitled "unlocking a device by performing a gestures on a unlock image". Now I think Apple could have left that one out. That is really broad. Almost every phone uses something like that. The Webos devices, the android devices, and some of the Windows mobile devices all use the gesture unlock.

I think all of the user interface ones are little sketchy. But the hardware patents, like power management I think are pretty strong. I read a comment where a man said that he was not going buy the iPad because of Apple suing HTC.

Why would that influence your buy? That’s like Microsoft suing HP over something and you deciding not to buy a windows computer. Worse case scenario Apple wins and HTC might have to pay millions in licensing fees but it's not going to shut them down and if Apple loses nothing will happen. I personally don't think Apple will win. But I'm not going to think any less of Apple because of it.