Court Denies Samsung's Plea To Lift Galaxy Tab Ban

The U.S. district court has shot down Samsung's request to temporarily lift a ban placed on sales of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 device last week.

According to a report Tuesday from The Register, Samsung was hoping to lift the ban until it could formally appeal the preliminary injunction ruling later this year. The District Court of California, however, ruled to keep the ban in place, as Samsung failed to prove it would suffer "irreparable" harm from not being able to sell its Galaxy Tab tablet in the U.S.

"Samsung has not met its burden of establishing that it will likely face irreparable injury absent a stay of the preliminary injunction," Judge Lucy Koh said in a court filing. "Samsung representatives have stated publicly that Samsung projects no significant harm as a result of the preliminary injunction."

[Related: Samsung Expects To Sell 10 Million Galaxy S III Phones By July ]

A Samsung spokesperson did tell CRN last week, when the ban was first initiated, that it was "disappointed" in the ruling but did not feel it would have too significant an impact on its overall sales. The injunction only applies specifically to the first-generation 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab device, so sales of the company’s second-generation Galaxy Tab 2 or 7.1-inch Galaxy Tab will not be affected.

The ban was formally put in place last week when Koh ruled in Apple’s favor that Samsung had unfairly infringed on several of Apple’s iPad patents when designing its Galaxy Tab.

Koh had previously denied Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction in December, but changed her mind, ruling that the Korean tech giant’s infringement was creating a "hardship" for Apple.

"Although Samsung has a right to compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market with infringing products," Koh wrote in the ruling last week. "While Samsung will certainly suffer lost sales from the issuance of an injunction, the hardship to Apple of having to directly compete with Samsung's infringing products outweighs Samsung's harm in light of the previous findings by the Court."

Samsung told CRN Tuesday that it will continue to seek an official appeal of the injunction.

"Regardless, we will continue to pursue a request for an appeal of the GALAXY Tab 10.1 preliminary injunction, which we filed on June 26 to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit," a Samsung spokesperson wrote in an email.