It seems pretty damn obvious and sensible that you shouldn't be able to register such inane patents as "pinch to zoom" any more than you should be able to patent wheels on a car, pressing A to jump, or two wings on an airplane.
Look, even if you and others claims about software patents are correct, if you were hoping for this case to bring a revamp of the patent system, this wasn't going to be the case. IIRC, Samsung wasn't even spending time arguing that pinch to zoom, etc. were obvious, vague, or whatever, they based their case against patents on prior art that dealt with things like table top projector prototypes.
The jurors are mostly going to deal with the arguments made by Samsung, and Samsung, despite a bit of grandstanding rhetoric, was not making the case for patent invalidity.
You know what Samsung was doing instead of spending all their arguments against the validity of Apple's patents? They were arguing and putting on paid experts to talk about why
their patents were valid--patents such as one for playing music in the background while web surfing, or sending an email with a photo attachment. And they were trying to use FRAND patents offensively and arguing why they should be able to charge Apple for patents on Intel chips when Intel had already paid for them. It's really hard to argue against the patent system in one breath while in the next breath Samsung is putting on highly credentialed and highly paid experts to argue about why Samsung's patents for emailing a photo or listening to an MP3 in the background are valid. This is probably why they weren't vigorously arguing the "obviousness" factor of pinch to zoom, etc. They'd look like hypocrites and risk invalidating their own patents.
Jurors can really only work with the arguments the lawyers present. And if Samsung itself is putting on academic experts to tell the jury why listening to music in the background or emailing photos are valid patents, Apple is also putting up experts to tell you about why their patents are valid, and neither side putting up a Richard Stallman to say, "a pox on both houses, software patents are bad." With both sides spending millions of dollars on experts to tell the jury that "software patents are good, especially the ones owned by the party that I'm arguing for, just not the patents of the other side, they're bad," or, the other party's patents are good, but my party isn't infringing them because of these specific differences from implementation," you are mostly going come away convinced that software patents are ok.
Maybe you could've changed the system if Samsung wasn't countersuing with software patents of their own, so they could spend their time arguing about why all such patents are bad instead of spending their time arguing why their patents are good. But that's the litigation strategy of all these companies--fight patents with patents. They've become deeply invested in the system and are not going to upend it because that overturns a lot of their side businesses in cross-licensing or risks zeroing out the money they spent on prior patents.
This is what you're going to see in the Google v. Apple case that was recently filed (Google sued Apple over patents over things like location-based reminders, video players, and email notification) if it goes to trial. Google will put up highly credentialed experts and highly paid experts to argue that their software patents are valid, Apple will put on experts to argue why they're patents are valid, neither side will put up an RMS type guy that will argue against the system. This is not the way that you're going to convince jurors that software patents are bad.
Jurors only work with what the attorneys give them, and it's not a good expectation that they will disrupt the software patent system when both sides are constantly telling them about the validity of their own software patents. They aren't morons when they're only responding to what both sides' attorneys and their experts have constantly reinforced throughout trial--software patents are good, software patents are important, especially our software patents.
