Apple was dealt a setback in a German patent battle with Motorola today after a Manheim court granted a permanent injunction against Apple's iCloud push email notifications.
The injunction also covers devices that can access iCloud and its predecessor, MobileMe.
Separately, Apple removed several items from its German online store - the iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4 - but patent blogger Florian Mueller said this was related to a December injunction granted to Motorola and not today's decision. SlashGear later reported that the products were returned to the store after the court granted Apple a suspension.
Injunctions like the one granted today by Judge Andreas Voss of the Mannheim Regional Court don't go into effect until the winning company - Motorola, in this case - actually enforces them. There's a gamble with that enforcement, though. Motorola will have to post a 100 million Euro bond, and if an appeals court overturns the injunction down the road, Motorola will be liable for damages Apple incurred while its products were off the market. Apple previously asked the court to put that bond at 2 billion Euros.
As a result, "it appears to me that Apple can keep the iCloud (and MobileMe) going for the most part, but if and when Motorola enforces today's decision, it will have to deactivate the push email service," Mueller wrote in a blog post.
Push email provides BlackBerry-esque alerts about new email. "The alternative, which Apple's customers in Germany will have to use if they receive iCloud/MobileMe email, is to set a client to check for new emails periodically and pull them," Mueller said.
While this is likely not welcome news for Cupertino, Mueller noted that "setting one's email client to, for example, a two-minute interval to check for and pull any new email messages is not the end of the world."
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a translated statement provided to FinanzNachrichten.de about the product removals, Apple noted that the injunction only applied to Apple's online store; the products were still available in Apple Stores and third-party retailers.
This is the third favorable, Apple-related decision for Motorola in Manheim, one of which will be reviewed later today, Mueller said.
For more, see PCMag's review of iCloud and the slideshow below.