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BlackBerry Sues iPhone Keyboard Maker Typo
judgecorp writes "Typo Products, which makes a physical keyboard for the iPhone 5 and 5S is being sued by BlackBerry. The firm — co-founded by media personality Ryan Seacrest — provides an iPhone case which includes a physical keyboard, whose keys are sculpted very like those of a classic BlackBerry phone. 'From the beginning, BlackBerry has always focused on offering an exceptional typing experience that combines a great design with ergonomic excellence. We are flattered by the desire to graft our keyboard onto other smartphones, but we will not tolerate such activity without fair compensation for using our intellectual property and our technological innovations,' said Steve Zipperstein, BlackBerry’s General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer."
who?
I'm surprised that anyone who's used a decent touch screen would want a micro-qwerty. Admitted I have only used Blackberry keyboards occasionally, but they didn't strike me as very easy to use.
The name of a smartphone keyboard manufacturer is Typo?
Also, Ryan Seacrest is a founder of the company.
their attorney will need to spend his entire opening argument introducing the jury to Blackberry phones.
A network of IP trolls, these phone companies. There can be only one, the quickening!
The keyboard on a Blackberry is a fucking joke, made for people with tiny fingertips..at least, on my Bold touch model. I can barely use the thing, I hate it. It's my work phone though, so I had no choice in the matter.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
They shamelessly copied the look of the BlackBerry keyboard. So what. The design of a QWERTY keyboard isn't an original work of authorship, nor is it nonobvious, nor are QWERTY keyboards associated with BB in the minds of members of the public.. No copyright, no patent, no trademark.
Case dismissed.
BB should buy the thing if it has any money left.
Blackberry is dying. If their only move is to sue people trying to imitate their "exceptional typing experience," then the death knell isn't far away...
So, does this mean that Slashdot's resident patent critics will now now stop poking fun at companies who patent rounded rectangles and upgrade to three dimensional patent joking by making fun of companies who sue other companies over regularly spaced sequences of rounded boxes? I for one would welcome a change. That rounded rectangles joke is getting so old it has grown a long white beard , plus 3D patent joking is just way cooler that 2D patent jokes.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Litigation.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Blackberry should be grateful that anyone is even willing to copy them, the BB10 line of phone is the worst "innovation" in mobile technology, maybe of all time. Putting a keyboard on a phone is not a new concept, at one time all phone had at least some form of keyboard. It should be, in a fair system, extremely hard for Blackberry to defend that another company stole there keyboard design. Blackberry hardly innovated the mobile keyboard, in someways they did it injustice, except for the 9900 line, all other keyboards ever offered by Blackberry were just small and incorrectly laid out in every conceivable way.
From an ergonomics stand point, the new BB10 line is a curse to use and operate. The interface design, which is the "staple" of any mobile system, has the layout and usability that would be expected from an elementary school child programming for the first time. It hides almost all functionally off the screen, under buttons in menus and side screens, it doesn't implement swipe properly and it's a cluttered, messy, disorganized shamble.
In the last year I've had the opportunity to use the Q10, Z10, Z30, iPhone 4s, HTC One and S3. Without a doubt the Z10, 30 and Q10 left me wanting to throw my phone at wall almost constantly. It is so infuriating to try and do any meaningful work on the Blackberry that I ended up giving the phone back to the company I work for. It was a productivity curse, the drop in quality from the 9900 line to the new BB10 line is amazing, I don't know what Blackberry was thinking but they failed 100% in any attempt to change the company's image, I still see them as the trashy, cheap, garbage phones they always have been. They deserve to go out of business, as well as anyone who can honestly say BB10 is a good platform.
If I was Blackberry I would humbled that anyone even wanted to copy me, Blackberry made one usable keyboard and that was it, they never innovated anything else to a point that would make a Canadian proud or an employe happy to go to work. Just cut your loses Blackberry, you've failed outright in creating a new mobile experience.
Once Blackberry changes its business model to litigation they will get back all the fans they lost.
the incompetence that brought them to the brink of destruction.
There have been many, many non-blackberry phones with keyboards, I haven't heard of any of them being sued.
For example, the Nokia 9000 had a keyboard in 1996: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator
Blackberry might have a valid case, but it would be handy if the specific patents were cited...
The article doesn't clarify if BlackBerry patented the keyboard layout and set up, and whether the patent is still in effect.
If so, they are well within their rights to enforce it. Typo Products can probably work out a deal with them, et tutti contenti.
If the patent has expired, or if it was never granted/never filed... suck it, BlackBerry. You should know better.
Cheers!
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
It's funny, when the Blackberry Curve came out, I remember thinking of how much the keyboard and layout reminded me of my Treo 600...
And now, ~10 years later, Blackberry is suing someone for something they didn't even create... I don't see Handspring/Palm/PalmOne having a tiff about it (but then again, maybe if they sued everyone who came out with something more desirable than their product, they might still be around soaking up others' profits...)
Don't get me wrong. I believe that someone who creates something has a right to profit off of it, without some second-rate hack coming in and stealing the idea out from under them.
But, seriously, the keyboard design? It wasn't original when it was on the Blackberry, and it still isn't original now that Blackberry is going the way of the dodo.
Lawyers earn and no better way is there than to churn. In the interest of protecting a client, its a quick action to take because they can. Just because they could doesn't mean they should. SO this could be a legal action outside the sphere of Blackberry just doing what they do - churn to earn.
OR Blackberry in its desperation could be attacking all comers to its last remaining properties. It's interesting that there exists professionals for whom Blackberry remains an essential AND want to integrate other devices adding keyboard functionality. But this device looked like it was too much of a ' kludge' for my personal tastes. I chose not to pursue the $100 case for iPhone with keyboard.
AND I think that threshold barrier to purchase is reason enough that Blackberry have no case of patent infringement since keyboards have been around for awhile now. Adding a bluetooth keyboard case for iPhone doesn't equate to a Blackberry phone.
As it is, the shape of the keyboard is not the same, the BlackBerry is kind of the bottom half of an ellipsoid, the Typo goes to the edge of the iPhone, so is the bottom part of a rounded edge rectangle.
Many of the keys do not even have the same function outside the qwerty So the only thing that is ismilar is that dropped corner. Is it patented?
I suspect as in so many things, personal support for RIM's case is probably based on the user's dislike of Apple. Any bad news even for outfits that provide aftermarket devices for iPhone is good news for some folks
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Now you can send embarrassing typos with complete wrong words instead of just mistyped characters?
Seriously though, I thought that autocorrect was bad, but swype seems to have a real twisted sense of humor.
I never realized it before, but my pc's keyboard doesn't change case on the labels either! I'm going to have to demand a new keyboard that rectifies that problem.
...how many of us knew this keyboard/case existed? It really is sad to see what has become of RIM/BlackBerry.
read Blackberry [User] Sues iPhone Keyboard Maker [for] Typo
When you stop making relevant products. You start to file patent lawsuits to survive. Just because another product looks similar to your product does not mean its the same. We obviously have so many examples of similar products with no question of patent infringement. Yet who really is surprise by this from RIM?
Tech company main sequence: start as a brightly shining innovator, make too much money, get mired in politics, run out of ideas, run out of money, collapse into a dark, trollish corporate remnant. Blackberry has officially become the latest troll star.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
That's it RIM...grasp at those straws.
Here you are - http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The Sidekick devices had much better keyboards. In fact, after all my use of modern smart phone keyboards; the Sidekick is *still* the one I compare everything to. Let's not forget the only thing Microsoft ever got out of buying that platform was the keyboard; which they put on an attachment for the 360.
In the pre-iPhone days, keyboard design was a massive part of smartphone design. All the major players spent a ton of money on R&D + patents. The net result is that almost every minute detail has been covered with patents.
For any new entrant, its not really a question of if they infringe a patent, but how many patents they infringe, and whether or not they can get a feasible licensing deal.
Typo either didn't do the due diligence (nobody can be that stupid), or decided they would take the risk that it wouldn't be worth suing them over. Guess they found out the hard way that RIM is digging into the couch cushions for spare change.
Next they will sue Palm for inventing the smartphone.
Please make a typo for my S4 what would be even better is a hybrid zerolemon monster battery/case + typo style keyboard. Days of battery life, real bar style keyboard rather than sliders so you can type without the onscreen keyboard taking up most of your displays real-estate and actual button press feedback rather than finger meets rigid slab making it more likely to develop health problems.
As long as the damn thing can physically fit in my pocket I don't care about weight or aesthetics I just want something productive that works.
BB has failed, and instead of trying to salvage anything they seem to be turning into the new patent troll company. Anyone else remember SCO? Hint: jump while you still can.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Everyone on the board of directors at blackberry is kicking themselves for not thinking of this idea first. THEY could have been the ones selling their "world renowned" mobile keyboard to the apple masses, instead of getting beat by a Reality TV host.
Moral of this story, either give your customers what they want, or someone else will.
Shucks... The balance sheet doesn't look great... Seems like everyone hates us these days... Oh! I know how to gain moar appreciation from the public! We'll sue the shit out of the small guy!
SSL / TLS will never be as secure as symmetric encryption with per-device keys
Even if each device has its own TLS client certificate?
...because there's a typo in it. *ducks for cover*
Twinstiq, game news
I'm still using a Nokia Symbian phone, prefer to use the traditional Num Pad predictive text to Qwerty...
But then I'm old fashioned.
im glad. ryan seacrest is a douche and typo was doomed to fail anyway.
I had no idea he was still in the game!