Samsung is once again in the thick of a legal wrangle with Apple.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant invoked a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, on Thursday, at a U.S. court. The injunction is based on a handful of powerful patents that could dent Samsung's business prospects with an outright ban on the company's maiden Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone to be released in U.S.

According to FOSS patents author Florian Mueller, the four Apple patents under scrutiny are said to be the equivalent to the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", thereby hinting at the plight of Samsung after being caught in the web of patent lawsuits from Apple.

Apple has reportedly alleged the new device from Samsung infringes on four of its patents, which are as follows:

U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647: a data tapping patent for which the U.S. ITC ordered an import ban against HTC;

U.S. Patent No. 8,086,604: a unified search patent that relates to Siri, which could concern Google's mobile search service;

U.S. Patent No. 8,046,721: a slide-to-unlock patent that could force Google to drop the feature from its stock Android and pave way for an OEM version to substitute it.

U.S. Patent No. 8,074,172: a word completion patent that improves typing speed by auto-correcting mistakes and adding new words to database on touch screen keypads.

The preliminary injunction, if upheld by the court, could prove a fatal blow to Samsung's business prospects as the new smartphone might be banned all over the U.S. permanently.

The Google-Apple and Samsung-Apple wars have been a feature of the mobile phone industry for a long time now.

As yet there seems no respite or solution for the ongoing dispute. However, it might be better... some quarters believe... if Google plays it safe and drops those features that could trigger a patent violation; at least in the better interests of its hardware partners, besides gaining some reprieve from constant allegations and lawsuits from Apple.

The Internet search giant is understandably in a fix over possibly dropping the feature and acknowledging the infringements or continuing the fight against Apple.

Either way, the smartphone battle seems to have taken a new dimension, with intentions of disrupting each others' business prospects in a bid to get a strangle hold on the lucrative market, the latest move in the war.

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