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It is odd to patent a bag, I agree. However, Apple needs to make some attempt to protect ALL of its intellectual property. They have the money to enforce the patent - most small companies do not. You have to assume that the bag will be made in some Chinese (or worse) sweatshop that will have no hesitation in selling the same bag with another company's logo on it. You have to assume that when you offshore production you are effectively releasing your design details to the world. Foreign manufacturing/assembly houses will sell you out in a second or at least their employees will.

I remember an article from years ago (~10-15) about how Cisco Systems realized that one of their contract assembly houses has ripped off one of their products and was selling it at 25% of their price. Same product, same production line, different Logo on the product in a plain white box. There are countless stories like this.

It was worse than that, a Chinese company was making exact copies of the Cisco servers.

Right down to the serial numbers.

Cisco detected the problem when they got multiple service/maintenance request for the same serial number server in widely separated locations.

They tracked down the company making the clones, and that company's response to Cisco's futile attempt at getting a Chinese court to issue a cease and desist order was to blandly offer to build the servers for Cisco!