Push Email Suspended On iPhones In Germany

New submitter elashish14 tips this news, snipped from Ars Technica: "Apple has been forced to disable push e-mail delivery for iCloud and MobileMe users in Germany this week. The move is thanks to a recent injunction awarded to Motorola as part of the ongoing patent dispute between the two smartphone makers.... The patent at issue relates to older pager designs, but Motorola was able to convince a German court that it applied to Apple's implementation of push e-mail that syncs across devices via iCloud. The injunction went into effect on Thursday of this week, requiring Apple to disable push e-mail syncing in Germany."

Comments

Truce

[sg_oneill]

Yet another way the consumer is being raped by this senseless patent war. Call a truce you loopy money hungry bastards..

Re:Truce

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

The weirdest thing about this is, that there are no software patents in Germany.

I guess that said software patents might qualify as "regular" patents since there are phones involved.

Re:Truce

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the point? You , me and everyone here has "read" the verbose, archaic, purposely overdone and almost obfuscatory text of some patent or another. We want to know what the patent does using the hallowed principle of "If it's quacks, it's a duck".

Automatically 'pushing' messages from one computer to another is something a "practitioner skilled in the art" (mostly anyone here) can do and consider obvious.

So no, while I could be wrong, I concur with the guy you're responding to. And I haven't read it either

Re:Truce

[erroneus]

Yes, but that's SMTP not any client side protocol. The client side is a different story.

I don't care about the outcome in this one. I only hope that it hurts badly for one side or the other. One thing seems to becoming obvious -- Germany is the new East Texas.

I just hope the families of various politicians are interrupted, annoyed or iritated by all of this so that attention to the issue. Politicians only care about what affects them and that's about the extent of it. They listen to the highest bidder after that and we already know who the highest bidders are. I only hope it "gets too stupid, even for the politicians to tolerate."

Re:Truce

[zigurat667]

It's not about push e-mail but about status synchronization between multiple devices. See page 13 of the patent.

Re:Germany is

[Forever Wondering]

the new US District Court of Eastern Texas.

Actually, Moto has been negotiating with Apple over this patent since 2007--to no avail.

Generally, the German courts have been much more level headed than Eastern Texas.

In this particular case, the German court determined that Apple had been negotiating in bad faith, and thus, Moto was entitled to a special injunction (because of Apple's egregious/scofflaw behavior). When Apple saw the handwriting on the wall, they rushed to [the court to] "pay up", but the court said "too little, too late".

Considering how much of a patent bully Apple is, this is one of the few places where they've been properly spanked.

Ya I don't think anyone is interested in licensing

[Sycraft-fu]

All the companies are just interested in making Apple sit down and shut the fuck up. None of this counter-lawsuit stuff started until Apple started to try and shut everyone else down. The other companies that made cellphones had occasional hissing matches with each other, as companies seem to like to do, but it would get resolved since they realized it was in their best interests. While they'd all like to be the one and only phone provider in the world, they know that isn't going to happen so they'll settle for cross licensing and so on.

Then in comes Apple who decides they can just sue everyone else out of existence. They think they should be the only company other than maybe RIM who is allowed to produce a smartphone or tablet. No surprise it has raised the ire of all the other companies and they are now striking back.

They don't want money, they want Apple to stop suing. I'm not sure Apple will though, I think they are real scared. Apple's rise to their current mega corp status has all been about getting in to markets that nobody else is really having any success in and making it cool. This lets them sell their stuff with a massive profit margin due to no competition.

They did it with MP3 players first. They weren't the first company to make one, but they made them cool, made them a fashion accessory. Now everyone had to have one, but not just any one, an iPod. That has waned quite a bit these days, but no problem, because then they brought smartphones to consumers. Blackberry's were always business toys. The US government loves the things but they didn't sell so well on the consumer market. The iPhone made smartphones a thing to have and they did well there. Then of course they made tablets the new toy to have. Most people have no idea why they want one, but they want one.

However they don't seem to have a "what's next" and unlike the MP3 player situation, people are moving in on phones and tablets quicker than they are ready for. Android went from more or less an experiment to an extremely competent competitor in just a few years and has been selling really well. They see their market slipping, and have nowhere else to go.

So they are going sue happy, to try and keep everyone else out. If they can't, they risk losing their place of prominence, and no company wants that.

Re:IP laws prevent progress

[Anonymous Coward]

I can not even blame that industry for trying. I can only blame the people that voted for those who allow it.

I'm getting really tired of this cop-out. "You can't blame the company, they exist just to make money!"

Yes, I fucking well can. Companies are made of people, people have moral compasses; if dickheads want to try this shit then they should be lynched for being immoral (aka evil) bastards. This is the Nuremberg defense all over again, "I was just doing my job!" — guess what, asshat? Power comes with responsibility, you don't get to have your money/power and then ignore all the externalities you created.