Appeals Court Lifts 18-Month Injunction Barring iCloud Mail Push Notifications in Germany

As noted by FOSS Patents, a German appeals court as lifted an injunction that has barred Apple from offering iCloud email push notifications to its customers in that country. The injunction, sparked by a lawsuit from Google's Motorola unit, has been in effect since February 2012, but it now seems likely that Apple's German customers will soon see the return of the functionality.

...I called a spokesman for the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court), who was able to confirm to me officially that this appeals court granted an Apple motion stay the enforcement of the Mannheim Regional Court's February 2012 injunction.

As soon as Apple posts a bond (a requirement meant to secure Motorola's ability to collect infringement damages should it, against all odds, prevail at the end of this litigation and, equally unlikely, Apple go bankrupt in the meantime), it can give the push email feature back to all Germany-based iCloud users.

An April ruling by the German court had opened the door for Apple to file another request for a lifting of the injunction, and that request has now been granted.

Apple has been maintaining a support document regarding the issue on iOS in Germany, noting that it is currently unable to offer push functionality for email services from iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, QQ, and NetEase, with customers having to use a fetching method to retrieve new emails for those services. But with the new ruling, it appears that Apple will soon be able to restore this functionality to its German users.