The craziest thing about this injunction is it isn't even about 'swipe to unlock' which is pretty ridiculous, but it is about unified search (the search bar on Android phones searches the device /and/ the web - Apple has a patent on that, Google does not.)
Personally, I don't know why Apple's just going after small potatoes.
Given their patents, they clearly own Google Instant and Google's standard multi-source (Web/Images/News/...) search plus a bunch of other things (thoughts about how many Apple patents Chrome must infringe?).
Why waste time on Android phones? Win an aggressive enough lawsuit and they'd own Google. Even if Apple just got an injunction, that would be enough to cripple Google (to the point where Google would agree to extortionate licensing terms, I'd bet).
they're going after what they think they can win. Getting a patent granted is one thing, defending it in court is another. if a patent gets invalidated by a judge it is forever worthless, but if it has yet to be tested in court it can be used to bully smaller players who can't afford to defend themselves. bringing a patent case against google's core business will cause google to fight back with all their might, and it might end up the wrong way for apple. They have to save that case until they create a situation where they are sure they can win.
Could be they want to set a precedence for the patent with a smaller target, and then aim at the big stuff that is more commonly known by the non-tech crowd.
Because the patent doesn't seem to apply to servers i.e. it specifically refers to client devices attributes.
The original use case for the Apple patent was the Sherlock search feature back in OS 8.5 (1998) which utilised a plugin system. IIRC it was a unique feature as not even search engines e.g. Altavista were doing multi source search at that time.
I can't imagine it would be hard to find prior art for it though.
