A European injunction filed by Apple last week prevented Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in countries belonging to the European Union.  But as of today, the ban has been lifted, except in Germany, until the hearing set on August 25.

So for the next few days, Samsung-lovers in Europe can avail of the Samsung tablet.  The reason for lifting the ban is because Samsung’s parent company is in Korea and the German court doesn’t really have powers to rule over them.  And since Samsung has a German subsidiary, the ban will still be effective in Germany.

“It is not clear if the court can forbid a company based in Korea to sell its products in other countries than Germany,” said a spokesman at the Düsseldorf district court Tuesday.

And it looks like Samsung has luck on their side as evidence surfaced that Apple may have submitted evidence containing altered images of their tablet that led to the injunction.  The doctored image showed that the aspect ratio of the Samsung tablet was at 1.36, which is close to the iPad’s aspect ratio of 1.30, making it appear that Samsung really did copy Apple’s design.  But the real measurement of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is 256.7 x 175.3 mm with an aspect ratio of 1.46.

What Apple thought would be their smoking-gun in their case against Samsung could well be an explosive waiting to blow up in their face.  Intellectual property rights attorney Arnout Groen stated that the discrepancy on the evidence presented by Apple and the actual data is something that the court should investigate on and not be dismissed as a minor blunder.  Both companies declined to comment on the matter.

This is a silver lining in Samsung’s grey cloud as they prepare for the August 25 hearing, “We look forward to the opportunity to reassert our intellectual property rights at the hearing scheduled on August 25.”

In other infringement news, HTC filed a case against Apple in the U.S. District Court in Delaware stating that Apple infringed three of HTCs patents as seen in their Macintosh computers, iPads, iPods, iPhones and other devices.  HTC is seeking for compensatory damages, triple damages for willful infringement and other remedies.  The two companies have been bouncing lawsuits against each other for some time now and the International Trade Commission is going to review pending cases.

With all these patent infringement cases floating around you’d have to ask, “when will it all end?”  Unfortunately, I don’t see it ending in the near future.  Especially considering Google’s latest acquisition of Motorola beefs up Android’s patent drawer, while telling the world Google’s serious about its mobile efforts.  Apple, Microsoft and all the other players are serious too, as we can see by this ongoing, never-ending patent war that’s become a defining factor of today’s mobility movement.