Apple now wants Samsung Galaxy S3 banned

Steve Jobs may be gone but Apple’s war against Android wages on and, following on from its recent win over HTC, Apple has now turned its attention to the Samsung Galaxy S3.

Apple wants to Samsung Galaxy S3 banned from sale in the US.

Apple filed a motion against the Google/Samsung-built Galaxy Nexus in February, claiming it infringed on two of its patents – one was for the device’s slide-to-lock functionality, the other was to do with auto completion.

These have now been side-lined in favour of two additional patent infringements found inside the Samsung Galaxy S3. The patents in question are detailed below:

The first one (U.S. Patent 8,086,604) deals with a variety of universal search used by Siri. The second patent (U.S. Patent 5,946.647) is to do with the automatic detection of certain types of data on a device such as phone numbers, email addresses and hyperlinks.

‘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,’ said Florian Mueller, patent blogger.

He added: ‘there's an important overlap: the "data tapping" patent (U.S. Patent 5,946.647) 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.’

It is obvious that these legal skirmishes are protective measures and, despite Tim Cook saying patent disputes are a ‘pain in the ass,’ Samsung is seemingly too big to ignore now, posing a greater threat than any other manufacturer to Apple’s business model.

Here’s an extract from Apple’s statement to the courts: ‘Samsung has already sold over nine million pre-orders of the Galaxy S III; indeed, the Galaxy S III has been reported to be the most extensively pre-ordered piece of consumer electronics in history.’

We’ll keep you posted about how this develops.