Apple Wins One-Week Extension of Galaxy Tab Sales Ban in Australia

Just a day after an appeals court ruled to lift the sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, Bloomberg reports that Apple has won a one-week extension of the ban while the company attempts to appeal the decision.

High Court Justice John Dyson Heydon today extended the ban on the release of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 to Dec. 9. On that day, the country’s top court will consider Apple’s request for permission to appeal a lower court’s order issued earlier this week, which lifted a ban on the product that has been in place since mid-October.

“A stay for one week will cost Samsung, in effect, one week’s trade,” Heydon said, following a 90-minute hearing in Sydney. The extension will hurt Samsung “but not to extend the status quo is likely to be injurious to Apple,” he said.

Samsung had been planning to begin selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia today ahead of shipments into the country this weekend. The company was rushing to bring the device to market in time for the holiday shopping season, but has been forced to put those plans on hold for the time being.

Samsung argued that every day of delay is crucial as the clock continues ticking on the holiday shopping season, claiming that Apple has no basis for an appeal of the ruling, but the court is willing to keep sales on hold until it can hear Apple's side of the request for appeal.

Apple and Samsung are also battling over the Galaxy Tab in Germany, where Apple previously won an injunction barring the sale of three different models of the device. Samsung tweaked the design of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 several weeks ago in an attempt to skirt around the injunction, but Apple has filed a request to have the new Galaxy Tab 10.1N banned from sale as well, arguing that the new design still infringes on Apple's design for the iPad.