Apple looks to spoil Samsung’s Galaxy S III party

Apple requests U.S. preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone

Late on Tuesday, Apple brought a motion, in its second California litigation against Samsung, "to supplement the record regarding Samsung's Galaxy S III product". Apple formally asks the court for permission to add the S III as another product targeted by Apple'smotion for a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Nexus, a smartphone Samsung co-developed with Google.

Apple made this move approximately 20 hours after I wrote about the Galaxy S III being "the obvious next target". In my blog post I speculated that Apple might bring a preliminary injunction motion against it, possibly after awaiting tomorrow's preliminary injunction hearing. Apple decided to forge ahead now. Apple is on the offensive against Android. Earlier this week it filed an ITC complaint requesting an immediate import ban of 29 allegedly-infringing HTC devices. There's an important overlap: the "data tapping" patent that Apple is seeking to enforce against HTC's current generation of products is one of two patents Apple is using against the S III.

Apple purchased the S III in the United Kingdom, where Samsung launched it on May 29. The U.S. launch date is June 21 -- precisely two weeks after the preliminary injunction hearing.

Apple's motion notes that "[a]ccording to press reports, Samsung has already sold over nine million preorders of the Galaxy S III; indeed, the Galaxy S III has been reported to be the most extensively preordered piece of consumer electronics in history."

While the preliminary injunction motion filed in February targets the Galaxy Nexus over four patents, Apple is still analyzing the S III's potential infringement of two of those patents (the new slide-to-unlock patent and the autocomplete patent), but in order to accelerate the process and facilitate the court's analysis, Apple "will limit its current request for preliminary relief against the Galaxy S III to the '604 [unified search, i.e., Siri] and '647 [data tapping] patents, because it is clear that infringement can be shown with respect to these patents based on the current record".

Here's the full text of Apple's motion:

12-06-05 Apple Motion on Galaxy S IIIhttp://www.fosspatents.com/2012/06/apple-formally-requests-us-injunction.html