I told you a few hours ago that Apple lost an important lawsuit against the Motorola company and that the latter may impose a restriction on the sale of some iDevices in Germany. Well, it seems that Motorola has made this decision because Apple has withdrawn the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 terminals from the online store in Germany, but leaving the iPad 2 Wi-Fi tablets/ 3G and iPhone 4S. Although today Motorola won an important lawsuit, the withdrawal of iDevices has reason a lawsuit won in December by Motorola. It was then discovered that the iPhone 3G/3GS/4 and iPad 3G/iPad 2 3G infringed on a Motorola FRAND patent for a method of performing a countdown function during a mobile transfer originating from a radio data transfer system(method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system) and then Motorola won the right to ban the sale of those iDevices and apparently the company exercised that right and today Apple has removed some of those terminals from sale. The discontinued devices use Infineon baseband chips that apparently infringe Motorola's patent, but the iPhone 4S uses a Qualcomm baseband chip that does not infringe any patent but remains on sale.
"Even if some iPad and iPhone models are currently not available in our online store in Germany, customers should have no problem finding these devices in our stores or from authorized dealers," said an Apple spokesperson. Apple goes against the injunction, because Motorola has repeatedly refused to license the patent at issue on acceptable terms, although it has been held seven years ago to a so-called industrial patent.
The interesting part is that Apple still sells those models of iPhone terminals in its own stores and authorized resellers have them available for purchase, so people can still buy them. I assume that they are available for purchase there because they are still in stock and Apple is not allowed to import any more units through the subsidiary in Ireland that imports iDevices for the whole of Europe. I did not expect Motorola to take this decision, especially because it paid a bail of 100 million euros to impose the restriction.
Whatever the case, this is the most difficult decision taken against Apple in recent years and it will be interesting to see how its sales will be affected. The problem is that Motorola invoked the same patent in front of a court in the US and in case of obtaining a victory there, things get extremely complicated for Apple.
UPDATE: It seems that both the refurbished iPad 3G tablets and the iPad 2 3G tablets have been discontinued! Apple criticized the decision of Motorola stating that they were not given the chance to license the FRAND technology in fair, equal and non-discriminatory terms, so we will probably see an appeal filed soon at a German court.
UPDATE 2: The ban was suspended.
