A Regional Court in German upheld an earlier court’s ruling on Friday that Apple’s MobileMe and iCloud services infringe on patents owned by Motorola Mobility.
The lower court’s ruling said that the email push notification feature in MobileMe and iCloud violated two Motorola patents, and ultimately led to an injunction forcing Apple to disable the feature in Germany.
German Court: Yep, Apple’s push notifications infringe on Motorola patents
The new ruling leaves that ban in place and says Apple must pay damages to Motorola Mobility. Exactly how much money Apple will be expected to hand over, however, hasn’t been determined yet, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The push feature sends email messages to user’s iPhones without requiring them to launch the Mail app. With the feature disabled, iPhone owners in Germany must now set Mail to auto-check on regular intervals, or manually check for new messages.
Motorola previously managed to get a temporary ban on iPhone sales in Germany over patent infringement claims, although Apple managed to get that overturned in less than a day. Apple representatives said the company appealed the injunction because “Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”
A decision on whether or not Apple’s iPhone and 3G-based iPad infringe on the patents that led to the injunction is still pending, although a court date hasn’t yet been set.