German iPhone, iPad sales temporarily banned
Apple was forced to remove several iOS devices from sale on its German online store on Thursday as a result of its patent battles with Motorola.
The iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and 3G iPads are currently not available from the company's web store in Germany following a ruling in favour of Motorola relating to FRAND-pledged patents declared essential to 3G standards.
The iPhone 4S was not included in the order and the ban only covered Apple's online store, not its bricks-and-mortar stores, or resellers, according to software patent expert Florian Mueller.
However, Apple has since won a temporary suspension of the ban and will be putting the devices back on sale as soon as possible, Mueller added. At the time of writing the items are still listed as unavailable.
"At this stage I am absolutely convinced that the removal of those products from Apple's online store is a result of Motorola Mobility's enforcement of a ruling that was handed down in early December," Mueller wrote in a blog post on Friday.
The iPhone 4S was not included in the ban as it includes a baseband chip from Qualcomm, Mueller suggested.
"Assuming that Motorola and Qualcomm have a cross-license agreement in place — just like Samsung and Qualcomm do — Apple is covered by extension, as a result of what is called patent exhaustion. A patent owner gets paid only once for the same use of a patent in a product," he said.
On Friday, in a separate case, Motorola was granted a permanent injunction against some features of Apple's iCloud service by a regional court in Mannheim, Germany.
"Today's injunction is a permanent one, not a preliminary one. Preliminary injunctions come down at the end of fast-track proceedings," Mueller said. "This one, however, resulted from a full proceeding with a trial."
Specifically, the injunction was granted against the push email aspect of the iCloud service, meaning that German users can no longer receive automatic notifications of emails, but can still schedule regular updates — every two minutes, for example — to 'pull' the email down.
Despite it being a permanent injunction, Mueller said it is "a given" that Apple will appeal to the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court.