Apple's patent battle against Samsung is taking a break from the German courts and returning stateside for a complaint that targets the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first phone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Apple is asking for a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Nexus.
As noted by Apple Insider, the motion filed by Apple in California district court last week focuses on four patents that cover "data tapping," Siri and unified search, slide-to-unlock technology, and word completion for touch screens.
In a blog post, patent blogger Florian Mueller said the patents in question "are the patent equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
Of the four patents in question, three were issued recently. "Their numbers start with an '8,' and the eight millionth U.S. patent was issued in September 2011," he wrote.
The fourth one is the "data tapping" patent and that "should be a slam dunk," Mueller said since Apple already prevailed on that patent with the International Trade Commission (ITC) in a suit against HTC.
The ITC is "a notoriously difficult forum where only about 1 out of 20 smartphone-related patents is deemed violated," Mueller said, so it's likely Apple will also be victorious in California district court, he speculated.
HTC said recently that it can alter the "data tapping" feature to bypass the patent restriction, while leaving the core functionality intact.
Mueller also suggested that Apple's complaint goes after "a long list of Samsung products" but Cupertino is focusing on the Galaxy Nexus "because it's so new, and important." Indeed, Bloomberg reported that the case also mentions the Galaxy S II Skyrocket and Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, and the Galaxy 4.0 and 5.0 media players.
"A preliminary injunction would not prohibit the sale of a Galaxy Nexus just because it's called Galaxy Nexus or looks like one: it's all about which patents it infringes on," Mueller wrote. "Theoretically, Google could remove the functionality protected by any of these patents in order to keep the product on sale, but if it changes the program code of a lead device, this would make it particularly clear to everyone else in the market that there's an infringement issue."
Apple has already sued Samsung in the same U.S. court, and a trial will likely begin this summer. "With the other case being that far along, consolidation of the two cases into a single action is highly unlikely," Mueller wrote. In December, the court denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against four Samsung products.
Apple also targeted the Galaxy Nexus in Germany, but a Munich court recently declined to issue a preliminary injunction.
For more, see PCMag's review of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the slideshow below.