You might want to read before posting. There are no design patents being used in the Galaxy Nexus ban. Their argument is Samsung copied "unified search".

The person you were replying to was talking about the Galaxy tab which did infringe on Apple's design patent.

Still, I think a patent only reaches functional aspects.

I would be just as surprised if you could patent a shade of green as if you could patent the meaning of a test result.

Design and functionality are interlinked.

And it is pretty common to trademark colours.

But trademarks aren't a part of this lawsuit, are they?

The point is that if Apple was suing under trademarks they would have done things differently, but don't appear to be doing so, probably because patents have wider protections than trademarks do.

You can trademark a color in a certain context, but I doubt you can trademark the color and then enforce general ownership rights to it.

After all even in more specific contexts, I seem to remember 'Gel Cel' being impermissibly generic as a trademark.