There was a flurry of activity today on the German front of the Apple-Samsung patent war. Samsung dropped one of their suits upon learning that Apple might be shielded by a licensing agreement it holds with Qualcomm. Among the products protected by the Qualcomm license is the iPhone 4S.

Not inclined to let Apple get off too easily, though, Samsung filed a suit over four more patents. Three of them are fairly technical in nature, but the third deals with an “emoticon input method for mobile terminal.” That’s right, among other things, Samsung is suing Apple over a smiley. The four new patents were originally added as amendments to an existing suit, but Apple filed to have them divided, creating two new separate suits.

The news was tweeted out this morning by patent expert Florian Mueller, who was present at the hearings: