Foss Patents has established that Apple has now requested that the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Google Now be included in its ongoing lawsuit.

Two of the patents specifically relate to Apple’s voice-driven Siri personal assistant, as noted on Wednesday by Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents. They are U.S. Patent No. 8,086,604, and U.S. Patent No. 6,846,959, both of which are entitled “Universal interface for retrieval of information in a computer system.”

Beyond Siri, the filing also alleges the infringement of three other Apple-owned patents:
U.S. Patent No. 5,666,502: “Graphical user interface using historical lists with field classes”
U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647: “System and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data”
U.S. Patent No. 7,761,414: “Asynchronous data synchronization amongst devices”

Apple filed the motion to amend its infringement complaint in a California court on Tuesday.

As for the inclusion of Google Now, the ‘604 and ‘959 patents related to Siri are also included in the filing because Google Now has replaced the Android Quick Search Box in some instances. That search box was previously targeted by Apple in its complaint.

A hearing to discuss Apple’s motion has been scheduled for June 25 in a San Jose court in front of Judge Paul S. Grewal.

The patent litigation is nuts and thwarts innovation which in turn affects products being sold. And sometimes impacts a product after you have bought it e.g. Apple removing push email in Germany on iOS devices and Samsung removing global search on the Galaxy range. This was after you had bought the devices too.