Motorola wins in Germany against Apple, iCloud features banned, iPhone 4 disappears online

After scoring favorable outcomes with the ITC in its patent lawsuits against Apple, which allegedly had Google's backing, Motorola seems to have won big against Cupertino in Germany today.

The court awarded Motorola an injunction against the push email feature in iCloud, so German iOS users will probably be requested to set their email checking in another mode. “Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid and we’re appealing the courts decision,” Apple told paidContent in a statement.

Apple has, due to an earlier ruling from November, also pulled its 3G/UMTS products from its German online store last night, such as the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and the 3G-enabled iPad. Retailers are still selling those, though, and Motorola will probably have a battle before it to ban those products across all channels. "Even if some iPad and iPhone models are currently not available in our online store in Germany, customers should have no problem finding these devices in our stores or from authorized dealers," said an Apple spokesman.

The Apple iPhone 4S, which is Cupertino's bestseller this season, is exempt from the ban, as it features a "world" baseband radio from Qualcomm, and Apple is paying the due royalties to the chip maker, as Qualcomm's CEO Paul Jacobs said yesterday at the quarterly earnings report.

It wasn't that long ago when the Motorola ROKR was launched as the first phone with Apple's iTunes, but the roads traveled by those two since then took them pretty far away.

source: FOSSPatents & FinanzNachrichten.de (translated)