Apple has lost an appeal against a court ruling in Germany to have its iCloud push services restored. The service was disabled back in February after it was ruled that Apple had infringed on patents owned by Motorola Mobility. While iCloud is still available, users now have to open up their Mail app and fetch new email manually, or set their device to fetch email at certain intervals.
It is believed that contacts and calendars will continue to operate as normal, as will third-party email services from the likes of Google, Yahoo!, and AOL. Also, as soon as you leave Germany’s borders, all iCloud push services — including email — will be restored.
Apple has created a support page on its website for those affected. It reads:
Affected customers will still receive iCloud and MobileMe email, but new messages will be downloaded to their devices when the Mail app is opened, or when their device periodically fetches new messages as configured in iOS Settings. Push email service on desktop computers, laptop computers, and the web is unaffected, as is service from other providers such as Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.
Apple felt that the initial ruling and Motorola’s patent were “invalid,” and the company appealed the decision. It also joined forces with Microsoft to file a complaint against Motorola, which resulted in a formal antitrust investigation from the European Commission in an effort to establish whether Motorola has abused its standard-essential patents to “distort competition,” therefore breaching EU antitrust rules.
The Next Web reports:
The EC seeks to determine whether Motorola’s enforcement of its fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) patents had resulted in a failure to “honour its irrevocable commitments made to standard setting organisations,” the Commission said in a statement.
This particular case hasn’t yet gone Apple’s way, however. And it will now have to pay damages to Motorola, though its unclear at this point what that figure will be.
