Apple Tries to Stop Samsung Galaxy S III at the Border

Samsung says its lawyers didn’t design the Galaxy S III. Well, perhaps they should have, because the device has already been challenged by Apple, and it hasn’t even arrived at market in the U.S. yet.

Late Tuesday, Apple filed a motion in U.S. District Court in San Jose, requesting a preliminary ban on the Galaxy S III, which it alleges infringes two of its patents: U.S. Patent No. 8,086,604, “Universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system,” and No. 5,946,647, “System and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data.” The former applies to Siri — Apple’s speech-recognition personal assistant — and the latter to data tapping.

Rather than lodge an entirely new complaint against the SIII, Apple asked the court to simply add it to an existing complaint regarding Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus. A welcome gesture, though it’s not going to make this rat’s nest of patent litigation the company is involved in any less confusing.

“Apple has been able to obtain the Galaxy S III sold in the United Kingdom and determined that this device clearly infringes on at least two of the Apple patents at issue in the preliminary injunction motion for the exact same reasons as the Galaxy Nexus,” Apple wrote in its filing. “Because the Galaxy S III contains two of the exact infringing features already at issue with respect to the Galaxy Nexus, the S III is not more than colorably different from the Galaxy Nexus, and falls within the scope of Apple’s current proposed order submitted in connection with its motion for a preliminary injunction.”

The company has asked the court to impose an injunction on the Galaxy S III before June 21, its launch date in the U.S.