Earlier this year, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) filed a lawsuit against Samsung, claiming patent and trademark infringement and that the “user interface and innovative style” was used by Samsung in its Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets.

Earlier today Courthouse News Service reported that a federal judge has tipped the lawsuit in the favor of AAPL and has given Samsung 30 days to provide Apple Inc. with samples of a number of unreleased hardware models of their tablets and phones so that Apple may decide on an injunction on the infringement.

Samsung Electronics was told Wednesday to fork over five of its not-yet-released mobile phones to Apple. Sitting in Federal Court in San Jose, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Apple deserves the quick production of cell phone samples three months earlier than usual in the litigation process, though she drew the line at requiring testimony from Samsung executives.

“Apple has demonstrated good cause for some, limited expedited discovery,” said Koh. “While Apple has not yet filed a motion for preliminary injunction, courts have found that expedited discovery may be justified to allow a plaintiff to determine whether to seek an early injunction,” said Koh.

The Samsung models that Apple is allowed to evaluate include the Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G, and the Droid Charge.

These Samsung models have yet to be released although Samsung has argued that examination of the production samples, may not necessarily reflect final shipping models. But Koh ruled out Samsung’s argument as the company had already publicized its products and also promoted their latest tablet by giving away 5,000 Galaxy Tab 10.1s to attendees at the Google I/O conference earlier this month.

This is also a similar strategy to the one that Apple employed when sued by Nokia for allegedly infringing the Finnish company’s mobile handset patents.

Apple was originally hit with a suit by Kodak for various imaging patents it claims Apple infringed on. The ITC agreed to look into Kodak’s claim in February of this year.

The two patents that Apple cites in its counter suit are :

• Apple Granted Patent 6,031,964 : System and method for using a unified memory architecture to implement a digital camera device.
• Apple Granted Patent RE38,911 : Modular digital image processing via an image processing chain with modifiable parameter controls.

What is interesting about this pairing is that I have to wonder if it has any bearing on the lack of cameras we are seeing in iPods and iPads.

And how does the timing of this suit work with the upcoming more advanced camera in the new iPhone 4G, and imaging technology going into iPhone OS 4.0?

It seems that when the big boys get involved in Patent Suits the idea is to stack up all your various claims against one another and then play top-trumps to see what compromise can be reached.

Expect lawyers to get rich from this, and it to all probably be settled out of court.

Does Apple have a case? Or is this simply a tactic, similar to HTC’s, to try and back Kodak off? Let us know in the comments.

Oppenheimer analyst Yai Reiner issued a report yesterday that illuminated the issues and industry discussions that have been going on behind closed doors prior to patent suits Apple (AAPL) filed last week against HTC.

“Starting in January, Apple launched a series of C-Level discussions with tier-1 handset makers to underscore its growing displeasure at seeing its iPhone-related IP [intellectual property] infringed. The lawsuit filed against HTC thus appears to be Apple’s way of putting a public, lawyered-up exclamation point on a series of blunt conversations that have been occurring behind closed doors.”

“Our checks also suggest that these warning shots are meaningfully disrupting the development roadmaps for would-be iPhone killers. Rival software and hardware teams are going back to the drawing board to look for work-arounds. Lawyers are redoubling efforts to gauge potential defensive and offensive responses. And strategy teams are working to chart OS strategies that are better hedged.”

In simple terms Apple has been warning rivals for the best part of a year that it was not happy about them stepping ever closer to infringing it’s IP. Warned them appropriately, with the primary aim of disrupting their ongoing design work, and ultimately curbing what it perceives as theft of it’s ideas.

Tim Cook (COO of Apple) also touched on this last January in Apple’s quarterly analyst call : Apple “will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we’ll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal”.

As I speculated, and Reiner agrees, HTC is merely a proxy target for Google (GOOG), the company behind Android OS. He also points out that HTC does’t have any shared suppliers that may be affected by a legal battle between the two companies.

Most manufacturers interpreted these grumblings from Apple as related primarily to multi-touch. But that seems not to be the case, and they have misinterpreted the breadth and scope of Apple’s intentions. With the launch of new Android mobiles towards the end of last year and no direct comment from Apple many manufacturers decided to go ahead and push further with multi-touch phones, something they had previously held back on.

“It was likely in order to counter that perception that Apple began reaching out to handset OEMs in January and explaining in no uncertain terms that it was now ready to do battle and not just on multi-touch,” Reiner goes on, “It was ready to press its case along a number of axes that had made the iPhone experience unique, from the interpretation of touch gestures, to object-oriented OS design, to the nuts and bolts of how hardware elements were built and configured.”

In the HTC suit Apple not only lists multi-touch, but also a raft of other iPhone specific features such as power management, networking modules and object-orientated system design.

One down side to innovation is that a lot of phone designers are now treading more carefully, reexamining designs, and consulting with lawyers on those designs so as to avoid possible law suits from Apple. All of this could drag on for some time as the HTC lawsuit could take many years to be decided, and much of that could be delayed by pending investigations into that lawsuit itself by the ITC in the US, and another investigation by that same body into the still ongoing Apple V Nokia phone lawsuit.

Another worrying side effect of this (for Apple) is that Microsoft seems to actually enjoy this kind of battle and see benefits they can reap from the confusion. Consequently, they apparently stand ready with their own batch of patents and their Win7 Mobile designs to “join battle with customers that come under IP attack.” Now that’s a marketing ploy to pitch at OEMs!

If I was forced to choose between Android and Windows Phone 7 right now I think I might go with the company behind the OS which is a heavier hitter, and more experienced litigant of the two. So all this raft of lawsuits may do is end up helping Microsoft.

In other news AAPL shares rose even higher to a new record high of over $223 per share yesterday!