Nothing livens up an intellectual property dispute like a little sushi and some brazen hyperbole. In this week's Law and Apple, Apple opens up the legal floodgates in Japan, while Samsung strikes back at 'em with some Tolkien-esque banter.

Meanwhile, Google plays patent arms dealer in the escalating war between HTC and Apple, and a small communications company in Arizona might have bit off a little more than it could chew.

It's time for another whirlwind, around-the-world tour of Apple's latest lawsuits, this time with developments occurring on three different continents. In Europe, Samsung and Apple are dueling it out in Germany, and Down Under a judge tells Apple to cough up payment documents to prove Samsung's really a threat. We'll also discuss Apple's latest legal troubles in Asia, where the company sent a threatening letter to a Chinese food company to stop its trademark infringement.

The United States federal court granted "a major win for Apple" by scheduling the trial date much earlier than Samsung wanted. 

Sort of like if your favorite sports team got the easiest schedule in the league, or your college classes lined up so you have a five-day weekend every week. Obviously, there is still work to be done, but this ruling could not be expected to go better for Apple.

The purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion brings a lot of technology to Google, and possibly even the platform for a Google-branded Android phone. The biggest value of the deal, however, may be in adding 17,000 patents to Google's intellectual property portfolio, which currently only has around a thousand.  And of those new patents, eighteen of them will be a particular thorn in the side for Apple.

Ron Epstein, CEO of the patent brokerage firm Epicenter IP Group LLC, sums it up like this: “They brought a set of patents that they thought would do a job they set out for, which is telling Apple to back off.”