For many months now Apple and Samsung has battled it out in a variety of courts as the iPhone maker continues to accuse its rival of breaking some of its patents, and today we have news that the US Galaxy Nexus ban has been lifted for now but the ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 stays.

At the end of last month we told you that Apple had managed to ban the Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the US, which saw the handset quickly pulled from the Google Play Store and followed an earlier ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Today though All Things D are reporting that a federal appeals court has temporarily put on hold a lower court’s ruling that the Galaxy Nexus should be banned from sale.

Originally U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh ruled that it was likely Apple could prove that the handset broke four of Apple’s patents and awarded an injunction in the company’s favour that prevented Samsung from selling the device in the US. Samsung went onto appeal that ruling and the judge said at the time she would not put the ban on hold while the appeal procedure took place.

The ruling is temporarily on hold and Apple has until this coming Thursday to provide papers to the appeals court suggesting why the ban should continue as Samsung makes its appeal, and there is currently no time frame for when the court will make its decision on that.

It wasn’t all good news for Samsung at the appeals court as it refused to lift the ban on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the news comes after Samsung stated that a software patch would be used to get around Apple’s patented technology.

While the Galaxy Nexus is not in the same league sales wise as the Galaxy S3, the handset is still important to Google as it was the first device to feature the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and will be one of the first handsets to receive Jelly Bean later this month.