Samsung Wins Approval for Australia Tablet Sales as Apple Loses

Samsung Electronics will start selling its rival to Apple’s iPad 2 in Australian stores before Christmas after the country’s highest court denied Apple’s bid to maintain a ban on Samsung Galaxy tablets.

Chief Justice Robert French, on behalf of the three-judge High Court panel, said that Apple failed to persuade them that it could win on appeal and denied the company a hearing. He reinstated an appeals court judgment lifting the ban on the Galaxy 10.1 tablets in Australia. The ruling ends Apple’s four-month effort to keep the iPad’s biggest rival out of Australia on claims it infringes patents related to touch-screen technology. Apple and Samsung, the world’s biggest makers of smartphones and tablet computers, have sued each other on four continents since Apple accused Samsung in April of “slavishly copying” its products.