Late last week, Apple filed a motion in a U.S. court seeking a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which runs Android OS 4.0. Florian Mueller, who has been closely following Apple’s litigation for many months, said on his blog that he expects a ruling on Apple’s filing “within a matter of months.”

He went on to say that the filing refers to four patents that he refers to as “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”: a “data tapping” patent; a patent covering Siri and unified search; a new slide-to-lock patent; and a word completion patent. Mr. Mueller noted that three of those patents were granted in recent months, and pointed out that the one involving Siri is obviously “a huge concern to Google with a view to its core business.”

He also characterized the older one, the “data tapping” patent, as “a slam dunk.” Mr. Mueller goes on to say about the “data tapping” patent: “It succeeded in the ITC, a notoriously difficult forum where only about 1 out of 20 smartphone-related patents is deemed violated. It also says something that HTC removed the feature and didn’t even appeal that part of the ITC ruling (though Apple appealed other parts).”

This new case is running concurrent with another Apple lawsuit against Samsung that was filed in the same U.S. court district and which will likely go to trial in the summer. Mr. Mueller said that it is unlikely to be consolidated with the new lawsuit because the older one is too far along.

Mr. Mueller’s blog post goes into great detail about all of Apple’s recent legal maneuvering, and he dives deep into the four patents referred to in the latest filing.

Thanks to Edward Moyer at CNET for the heads-up.