Tiger Woods has won an injunction banning the English media from publishing new details about his personal life, after instructing London-based lawyers to take legal action.

The move, described by lawyers as "unbelievable", prevents the media from publishing material that the US media would be able to publish, prompting further anger about the ability of foreign litigants to take advantage of repressive English laws.

"This injunction would never have been granted in America", the media lawyer Mark Stephens said. "It's unbelievable that Tiger Woods' lawyers have been able to injunct the UK press from reporting information here".

The injunction, granted by high court judge Mr Justice David Eady, comes amid intense press speculation about the golfer's alleged extra-marital affairs.

US media are reporting that the high court has blocked the publication of nude photos of Woods. The golfer's British lawyers, Schillings, deny that the nude photos exist and suggest that any images in circulation have been doctored.

"I am dealing with my behaviour and personal failings behind closed doors with my family," Woods said on his website last Wednesday. "Those feelings should be shared by us alone … no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake, which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy."

But there were concerns today that the ability of Americans to invoke the UK's privacy law makes a mockery of the English courts, as one US website ran a headline "Don't look for nude photos of Woods in Britain". Woods, would not have been able to take such action in the US, lawyers said.

"Woods would not have got an injunction like this in America," Gavin Millar QC, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, said. "Privacy law is weaker in America than it is here. It is not articulated as a constitutional right and it's subject to much stronger rights to publish on the internet. The material may already be available in America, but in this country what Mr Justice Eady and others say is that unless it is in the public domain here, by virtue of having been published by the "national media", they don't acknowledge that it is already in the public domain.

"The entire universe could be looking at it and it doesn't matter", Millar added. "But clearly there is no point maintaining an injunction that is completely pointless."

The case is the latest high profile privacy case involving Eady, who has been at the centre of complaints that the law protects celebrities unfairly, after he awarded £60,000 damages to the Formula 1 president Max Mosley last year.

The decision, which said that the News of the World had correctly reported that Mosley had taken part in a sado-masochistic sex session, but had falsely claimed that it had a Nazi theme, reignited debate about the extent to which alleged "immoral" behaviour should be protected by privacy.

"Obviously there is an argument to say that many of the matters that have been reported are private and have absolutely no public interest aspect to them other than salacious interest in someone else's private life", said Dominic Crossley, a partner at the law firm Collyer Bristow. "But the fact that these reports are so hugely in the public domain, one wonders how effective and wise it is to try to prevent further publications.

"These images are beyond the scope of an effective privacy remedy. The way in which the material has sensationally been disseminated across the world makes it now very difficult to keep control upon the media," Crossley added.

But the injunction obtained by Woods, although it prevents publishing details of the photographs, marks a move away from the most repressive injunctions, experts say. The emergence of so-called super injunctions, which prevent the media reporting that an injunction exists, was revealed by the Guardian in October after the oil trading firm Trafigura obtained an order prevented any reporting of proceedings such as the one brought by Woods.

"I suspect the Trafigura case has had something to do with this," said Millar. "The whole question of whether they and judges are using their power in private hearings is very important, and they are now much warier of making super injunctions."

Lawyers said it was unlikely that any American media organisations, if they published the images, would be bound by the English high court order.