Apple Targets Samsung Galaxy S III And Galaxy Note In Second Patent Case

It looks like the patent war between Apple and Samsung will never end.

Earlier in the year, Apple had sued Samsung for infringing on four of its patents. These patents were not included in the landmark patent case between the two companies that was won by Apple last week.

  

AppleInsider now reports that Apple has filed an amended complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, adding Samsung's Galaxy III and Galaxy Note 10.1 to the list of infringing devices.

Apple is suing Samsung for the following four patents:

1. the "data tapping" patent based on which the ITC ordered an import ban against HTC
2. a patent related to Siri and unified search, which must be of huge concern to Google with a view to its core business
3. a new slide-to-unlock patent that even had the head of the Taiwanese government profoundly worried
4. a word completion patent that provides major speed improvements for touchscreen text entry

AppleInsider reports:

Along with the Galaxy S III and the Verizon version of the handset, Apple added the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 10.1 to the list of infringing devices, bringing the total tally up to 21 accused devices.

pple claims it is suffering and will suffer irreparable harm from Samsung's violation of eight utility patents, four being asserted in the Apple v. Samsung case and four issued after that suit began. According to Apple, Samsung has "continued to flood the market with copycat products," since the separate landmark case started last year. In the intervening months, the Korean company has "continued to release new infringing products, including its current flagship device, the Galaxy S III."

Apple has listed the following infringing products in the complaint: the Galaxy S III, Galaxy S III–Verizon, Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S II, Galaxy S II-T-Mobile, Galaxy S II-AT&T, Galaxy Nexus, Illusion, Captivate Glide, Exhibit II 4G, Stratosphere, Transform Ultra, Admire, Conquer 4G, and Dart smartphones, the Galaxy Player 4.0 and Galaxy Player 5.0 media players, and the Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus and Galaxy Tab 8.9.

Apple had won a temporary injunction banning the sales of Galaxy Nexus in June for alleged infringement of the '604 "Unified search" patent, but the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit suspended the ban on Galaxy Nexus sales, while Samsung could appeal the decision.

Back in February, Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, had said that Google has the following options:

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.

 

It is also relevant to this case as all the Samsung devices that Apple has listed, run Google's Android operating system.

 

[via AppleInsider]