A U.S. appeals court has overturned a sales ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone and sent the case back to a lower California court for reconsideration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Thursday (local time) that the district court in California "abused its discretion" in imposing a preliminary injunction on Samsung's Nexus phone.

Although the Nexus is one of the Korean tech giant's older products, the ruling is likely to deal a blow to Apple because the patents in the Nexus case are directly related to the features of Google's Android OS.

This case is unrelated to the one Samsung lost in August and is unlikely to affect injunctions against other Samsung products, but experts say it will be useful to Samsung in its overall legal battle with the iPhone maker.