Sprint, AT&T Disable Universal Search on Galaxy S III to Appease Apple

From DailyTech: Apple, Inc. (AAPL) is back at it again, created a headache for smartphone maker Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) and the world's most popular smartphone operating system: Android.

Samsung's Android 4.0-powered Galaxy S III flagship phone escaped a preliminary injunction ban at the hands of Apple, but Samsung, AT&T, Inc. (T), and Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) appear fearful that its new "Universal Search" functionality might lead to a new infringement ban.

Apple holds a patent -- U.S. Patent No. 8,086,604 -- on a "universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system". The patent was filed in 2004 and granted in 2011 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Its figures offer no clues that Apple originally intended the patent on universal search to extend to mobile space. They show a search interface in Apple's OS X personal computer operating system.

Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows operating system has a very similar universal search (indexed search) functionality called Windows Desktop Search (the "Desktop" part was later dropped) which was available on Windows XP in Oct. 2001 [source]. WDS was available within many applications via custom plug-ins.

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