Push services from Apple have been disabled in Germany, thanks to a lawsuit from Motorola that ultimately led to an injunction in the country. As it stands, iPhone users will have to manually refresh their email by “pulling it,” or by setting up the iOS Mail app to fetch emails manually or on a preset schedule (quick tutorial below on setting that up). Both MobileMe and iCloud customers will be affected by the move.
Apple plans to appeal the ruling, arguing that the patent is invalid. But, there is some concerns about whether or not Apple will be able to get the injunction overturned in the German court.
According to Florian Mueller:
Apple may be right that Motorola’s push messaging patent is invalid. One thing that German patent law has in common with U.S. patent law (but not with UK patent law, for example) is that it is designed to allow the enforcement even of patents that should never have been granted in the first place. In the United States, a court will only deny an infringement ruling if there is “clear and convincing evidence” (a relatively high standard) of invalidity, and in Germany, a regional court like the one in Mannheim will only stay an infringement case for the duration of parallel nullity actions in other courts if it is convinced of a “high probability” of invalidity. In my experience, Mannheim is a particularly difficult court to persuade of the invalidity of asserted patents. The judges there routinely point out that it’s not their job to analyze in full detail whether a patent-in-suit is valid. In particular, they are highly reluctant to question the non-obviousness of a granted patent.
Anyone else starting to wonder if we should change our site name to legalgasm? There’s no end in sight to this lawsuit war between Apple, Samsung, Motorola, and by extension of the Motorola Mobility purchase, Google. While Motorola is getting all the headlines for being the company suing Apple over these Push patents, it’s important to remember that Google is in the process of finalizing its purchase of Motorola Mobility and that this patent is one of the 17,000 patents that Google purchased from Motorola Mobility last summer. We find it curious that Motorola is running point on the lawsuit and doing all the suing considering the Motorola Mobility purchase has recently been approved in the EU and US. Google now owns the patent in question.
Also, huge props to The Register for having one of the douchiest headlines in the news: Apple fanbois forced to go on the pull by Motorola patent. Ya, that’s right. It’s only the die-hard Apple fans using Push technologies on their iPads, morons.
Set up manual email fetching
- Open your Settings App
- Click Mail, Contacts, Calendar
- Click the Fectch New Data button
- Select one of “Every 15 Minutes, Every 30 Minutes, Hourly”
- Your email will now refresh itself, without Push.
