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Apple Faces Temporary iPhone, iPad Ban In Germany
An anonymous reader writes "A regional court has temporarily banned Apple from marketing or supplying iPhones and iPads in Germany, following a suit brought about by Motorola. However, Apple said that the judgement 'does not affect our ability to do business or sell products in Germany at this time.' This may have something to do with the respondent in the case being Apple Inc, the US parent company, and not Apple GmbH, the company's local subsidiary."
Apple is happily having other companies banned from releasing their smartphones in various companies using patents. One can hardly expect the Android base to not respond in kind.
Apple is faced with the prospect of "live by the sword, die by the sword".
Screw patents. I wish Apple would shake hands with Google and give up patents. They are silly and waste time that can go in development and in designing better products. Samsung is dodging patents like in the matrix! This is not productive.
Google may call for patent reform, but till then they have no choice but to play the game along with the others, whether they like it or not.
They have to be able to do business, and when Apple is getting increasingly aggressive now that their iStuff business is threatened by other corporations using the same technologies as those implemented (but rarely invented) by Apple.
I'm seeing a strong correlation between SCO and Apple these days, and I do hope for Apple that they know when to call it quits.
Apple didn't bother to show up, so they had a summary judgment made against them. They'll likely appeal and argue over the merits of the patents in question during the appeal. In the meantime, it's doubtful that any injunction will actually get enforced.
Google is not the villain... nor the victim. Neither is Apple, or any other of the combatants in the Patent Wars. Unfortunately, patent law doesn't allow someone to stay out of it... which is one of the ways in which it has become Evil.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Apple used to be a great company. Now, Apple is just a patent parasite. If iProducts are banned, Apple will only have themselves to blame. You can blame other companies for defending themselves against an aggressive scammer, like Apple.
Google certainly is the victim. Google has had their products banned because of Apple's aggressive patent scamming.
You cannot blame Google for trying to defend itself against a patent extortionist like Apple.
These scam lawsuits are 100% Apple’s fault. Google, HTC, Motorola, never wanted this.
Here's a handy overview of how various smartphone owners see the other brands' users.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It is nearly impossible to perma-brick an iPhone. Sounds like your engineer may be misinformed. Let me guess: you have a 3gs, you flashed on the iPad baseband, and now it's stuck at a recovery mode screen? Here's what you do: create a custom 4.1 firmware image with Pwnagetool or Snowbreeze (default settings should be fine). Make sure you have no overrides to gs.apple.com in your hosts file (apple is still as of writing signing 4.1 on the 3Gs). If you have shsh blobs saved, you'll have more restore options, but 4.1 is at the moment always a safe bet. Then put your device in "Pwned DFU mode" using a tool such as iReb (on a mac, it's easiest to use redsn0w). After you've done this, shift (or option) click the restore button in iTunes and select the custom firmware image you've made. Unless there is a hardware issue, you should have no problem restoring. If you have 3g, the process is the same, but you should create an image for 4.2.1 (apple is still signing this).
Totally sensational headline. The Injunction was against Apple Inc. and Apple Inc. can appeal and introduce new evidence. Apple Germany sells iStuff in Germany, not Apple inc. There has been no ruling against Apple Germany. how about /. deals with some facts instead of troll feeding?
So that is similar to Samsung Germany which isn't allowed to sell certain products in Europe (which Samsung France, Samsung Italy, Samsung UK and so on can happily continue to sell).
Seriously? You are criticizing Samsung for "dodging" scam patents like rounded corners? Why not criticize Apple for filing lawsuits based on scam patents? The JooJoo/Crunchpad had rounded corners before the iPad. Apple is just a patent parasite. We all know it.
Meh. With any major OS update, there's bound to be some weird issues in the x.0 release. That goes for Apple but other manufacturers as well... with Apple, it's usually some rogue process getting stuck running in the background, causing the battery the be sucked dry in a few hours. Mostly, these issues get fixed within a few weeks.
The issue with dropped connections on the 4S model doesn't seem to be "massive" at all, judging from what I read on the forums. It's a software issue apparently, and it occurs when using certain types of SIM-cards with a PIN. Removing the PIN appears to be a good workaround for most people until Apple issues a fix.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
> So much for Google's do no evil. At the same time while
> they're talking how patents are bad,
> they use their proxy companies to attack competitors.
Google is not a party to any of these lawsuits.
Apple sued various companies (Samsung, Motorola, HTC, etc). Since the choice of lawsuits (and venue!) is Apple's alone, and Google is not involved as either plaintiff or defendant, how is Google to blame?
Furthermore, these are all publicly traded companies, which are duty bound to act in the interest of their own shareholders and not Google. Acting in anything but their own shareholders best interest is the quickest way to draw a shareholder lawsuit. So how exactly are these publicly traded companies a proxy of Google? I would love to hear the explanation. It would be as convoluted as saying Apple is a Microsoft proxy. Or something.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Engadget ran this story with what I presume is the same misinformation in it last week. I haven't been able to reach ZD Net UK. They might be slashdotted.
It isn't an injunction, legal term Verfuegung, it is a default judgment of infringement. They will now appeal it.
Nothing to see here. (And the server in the UK seems to have fallen down on the job as well.)
There is a lot to see here. Because of the default judgment, Motorola can move to have the infringing products banned from sale immediately despite a certain appeal by Apple. This is how it works in Germany. In the United States, the infringing products can still be sold while the appeal is ongoing.
Much of the reporting I have seen stems from a Florian Mueller posting on his blog. Florian received the judgment from someone and nobody knew if it was fake of not. Florian's post was complete speculation on why Apple never showed up to the hearing. Since that original post, a number of German lawyers have contacted him with more information and now Florian has a number of additional posts up confirming that this is indeed a BIG DEAL for Apple.
Now, this exposes a big problem. I don't know where Florian lives. But he seems to not live anywhere near where patents are being fought. He writes as a bystander. I have never seen him write "I was in court today and watched the hearing in the case of XYZ against 123". There were a lot of people in the Mannheim Regional Court on Friday. Everybody there saw what happened. Motorola filed two suits against Apple. There were two hearings scheduled in the Mannheim court - about an hour apart. Apple's lawyers arrived half an hour before the 2nd hearing and looked very confused when they saw two hearings on the docketing board. Motorola's lawyers were already there and Apple's lawyers approached and said that there must be some mistake - there are two cases listed today. Motorola's lawyers said no, there was no mistake. You lost the first case. We got a default judgment because you didn't show up.
Yes, after Apple sued in March 2010.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Google hasn't bought Motorola. Merely states its intentions to do so, and filed some of the paperwork. Whether or not Google will acquire Motorola is still to be decided by regulatory bodies worldwide.
I vote based on politicians' actions, unless contrary to my preconceptions. Often wrong, never uncertain. #iamthe99%
I have the 4S no network problems at all, no service issues.... I'm not sure what you talking about regarding dropping Net connections
I look forward to the day when people aren't judged by their choice of cell phone.
How about "think at all"? Amount of FUD surrounding Apple or Apple vs Anything is depressing.
Google is infringing on patents. Knowingly, even. That hardly makes them victims.
I was gonna say this is something an Average Apple user can do? And the engineer would never recommend this because he would lose his job for telling people to go use home-brewed software to fix their phones.
... I reported this and more about 6 hours ago.
just so you know. Apple must, according to the judgement that I read through, has to pay Moto damages dating back to as early as the beginning of 2002.
And, as some have most assuradely already noted, this ruling is against Apple Inc. which many believe doesn't actually sell anything in Germany. The problem is the German Apple sites are owned directly by Apple Inc. and so the Lawyers are still discussing if they may have to be shutdown or whatever. Still waiting to see.
IT Admins Group: Where you decide the content
Yup, I was expecting someone would suggest I'd jailbroken the thing.
Guess what - I didn't. I never even tried, for a number of reasons I don't plan to go into. The phone is standard, kept up to date with a few days delay so I could check an update wouldn't screw up (I guess those years suffering Windows updates were good for something after all), and no apps that try to do something with hardware either.
Translated: the baseband code is as it came with the phone, and I intend it to stay that way. It now had 3 full rebuilds which made zero difference, and tomorrow I'll start round two where I will kick this upstairs properly.
What has happened here was direct consequence of a SIM unlock, and the suspicion is that Apple screwed up. I have no idea how they do an unlock, but this was supposed to be an official process and it went seriously wrong.
Oh, and before anyone else throws other suggestions in: I actually worked on mobile systems. That's one of the lesser reasons I keep the baseband code standard..
So, in summary: nope - it's all of Apple's own making.. It's a shame, I like the phone. I am not that fond of the Android phone I have as replacement, but that's simply personal taste.
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