This was a claim made by the late Steve Jobs; he was so angry that he threatened to 'go to war' over it. In fact he was prepared to use all Apple's huge fortune just to stop Android. It didn't come to that, but there is no doubt that Jobs felt the Android was basically a rip-off of his own massively successful iPhone.

Certainly the smartphone copied lots of ideas from the iPhone, and very probably wouldn't have existed in its present form if the iPhone hadn't been there first. But isn't this the way inventions and technological developments work?

The iPhone itself surely wouldn't have been the product that it is, without other innovative designs to give the inspiration. The BlackBerry, for instance, has been around since 1999 and it certainly influenced the design of the iPhone.

So if the Android is a stolen product, then so are many other prodcuts, including some created by Jobs himself.