Apple goes for the Samsung kill shot, files for preliminary injunction [Updated]

Apple has filed a motion for preliminary injunction against Samsung in the U.S. today, reports Florian Miller of FOSS Patents. The injunction is specifically aimed at four Samsung products, the Infuse 4G, Galaxy S 4G, Droid Charge and Galaxy Tab 10.1. Updated with statement from Samsung below.

The motion, if granted, would force Samsung to remove many of its flagship products from the market and make significant design changes to them in order to satisfy the conditions. Apple is claiming that many of the Samsung products mimic the design of Apple’s products, including the iPhone and iPad, closely enough to confuse consumers.

Apple’s original complaint against Samsung asserted that the electronics manufacturer was “blatantly [imitating] the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success.”

The move for an injunction can best be described as a preemptive strike by Apple against Samsung that has the potential to put an end to the legal wrangling very quickly, or backfire and weaken Apple’s position.

“If such a motion failed only due to poor (in terms of “premature”) timing, Apple would technically still have the same rights before — but psychologically (in terms of the court proceeding as well as how the outside world views it), a denied motion would look bad.,” Miller explains in a related post, “It would create the impression of Apple making unreasonable demands — and there are already many observers of this dispute who believe that Apple overshoots and interprets the scope of its exclusive rights too broadly.”

This latest action is one more move in the ongoing chess game between Apple and Samsung over the similarity of their devices. For its part, Samsung brought a counter-suit against Apple with the goal of an import ban on Apple’s devices. That counter-suit was later dropped by the Korean company.

Update: Adam Yates, Director of Corporate Communications for Samsung North America, has shared the following statement with us.

Samsung believes there is no legal basis for this motion by Apple. We will continue to serve our customers and sales of Samsung products will proceed as usual. Samsung will continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communication business.