Earlier this week we saw a German court award Apple a preliminary injunction against Samsung and the Galaxy Tab 10.1, banning Samsung from distributing or advertising the slate throughout most of Europe. It doesn't look like Samsung will have to wait long to try and convince the courts to reverse the ban, as a hearing concerning the decision has been set for August 25th.

Interestingly, it's been revealed that Samsung anticipated Apple would file a preliminary injunction against the Tab 10.1, so the Korean firm filed a protective pleading with the German court at the tail end of July, just days before Apple did file for its injunction. A protective pleading is filed when a company anticipates that an injunction against it is coming and includes the company's potential defenses against that injunction. In Samsung's protective pleading, it argued that there was no sense of urgency with the launch of the Tab 10.1 that would necessitate a block against it and that it was prepping a petition to have Apple's Community design (the one for the iPad that it used to have sales of the Tab 10.1 blocked) invalidated. Since the court considered those arguments when deciding whether or not to give Apple its injunction, Samsung will now need to come up with new arguments for the hearing on the 25th.

Considering that Samsung filed a protective pleading against Apple's injunction and the court didn't feel that the pleading was a good enough defense, it should be interesting to see what arguments Samsung brings to the hearing on the 25th. I'm sure it'd like to be able to distribute and advertise it's newest Android tablet across Europe, so Samsung will need to bring out its big guns to try and get the ban lifted. We'll let you know more when we do, but until then, go ahead and drop your opinions on how you think the hearing will go in the comments below.

Via Engadget, Reuters, FOSSPatents (1), (2)