Apple started this! In the same country against Samsung. Motorola has been on Apple’s case for some time now and this is their victory. A court in Mannheim, Germany ruled that iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 cannot be sold in online stores in Germany and must be pulled of from the online stores. The ruling also applies to any other 3G capable devices like iPads Apple sells. But fortunately for the Cupertino Giants, iPhone 4S isnt touched by the ruling, but iPhone 5 and iPad 3 might not be safe.
So the cause of the trouble is Apple’s push email service, see here is part of the rulingfrom the Foss patents blog:
This morning, Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court pronounced a decision on a German Motorola Mobility lawsuit against Apple Sales International, Apple’s Ireland-based European sales organization. Motorola won a permanent injunction against the push email service of Apple’s iCloud (and its predecessor, MobileMe) and any devices that can access it. Note that even though today’s decision enjoins Apple’s European distribution arm, the scope of the injunction is not Europe-wide: the Irish entity has to respect it as far as the German market is concerned (for example, it’s the contractual partner of customers buying Apple products from Apple’s German online store).
Apple has already gone ahead and removed all the said devices on sale from their on-line stores. As of now Apple is still able to sell in their offline stores, but Motorola is still on their neck and might get another ruling off the Mannheim judge for the same to apply to any selling of the Apple products that touch on Patents that Moto owns.
Here is where we say what goes around….
