Australia’s High Court has rejected Apple’s latest bid to halt the release of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.0 there. Samsung released in a  statement that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 “will be available in Australian stores in time for the Christmas shopping period.” This is great news for all the Anti-Apple people waiting with baited breath for the decision to be made. Sources say that a 16GB Wi-Fi version of the tablet will be $579 and the 16GB 3G Galaxy Tab will be $729.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was scheduled to launch in Australia on Sept. 12.  Apple filed suit in August and Samsung volunteered not to sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia any earlier than Sept. 30 while the case progressed. That came after Apple convinced a judge to delay Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch, claiming the tablet infringed on various elements of the Apple iPad 2. At the time, Samsung’s Australian counsel said Apple was basing its claims on the U.S. model, and Samsung agreed to hand to Apple several models of the Australian prototype.

Apple eventually dropped two of it’s 5 patent infringements because they did not apply to the Australian version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 but held strong to the other 3 infringements.

Apple needs to watch itself with the lawsuits it’s been filing lately because they seem to be stealing ideas from Samsung as well for their operating system. The most recent version of Apple’s iOS has a pull-down notification menu which appears to work almost exactly the same way as Samsung’s Android notification menu. Maybe Apple already has the patent for that and will sue Samsung again in another round of useless lawsuits…