If you thought Apple had the last laugh, or that these lawsuit court battles were over you were wrong. Today the US Court of Appeals has overturned the preliminary injunction that banned the sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone. This is just one small step for Samsung, but good news indeed for both them and Android as a whole.

An important thing worth noting in this reversal is the fact that the Galaxy Nexus runs stock Android from Google, not the skinned version the rest of Samsung’s phones do. Most of those injunctions were based on changes made and implemented by Samsung, so this looks promising for Android as a whole. This all started back in January when Apple attacked the Galaxy Nexus for slide-to-unlock, and has only escalated from there.

The appeals court has reversed the ban, or temporary injunction against the device, and even had a few words to say about the situation as a whole. The appeals court claimed Judge Lucy Koh and the entire court distrct (who awarded Apple 1 billion settlement) “abused its discretion in entering an injunction” regarding the Galaxy Nexus.

This is all just appearing thanks to the folks at Reuters, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing plenty of additional comments, appeals, and more coming very soon. In the end Samsung still lost (for now) and Apple was awarded a $1 billion settlement fee. Samsung is still looking to get that thrown out so we’ll have to wait and see. More details of everything related to this ongoing battle can be found below.

[via SlashGear]