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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.
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 ----
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!
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You're delusional. The BB10 UI was nearly universally praised. For multitasking, it's still unmatched. Its gesture suite, unlike iOS, is simple and intuitive.
It hides almost all functionally off the screen, under buttons in menus and side screens
WTF are you talking about?
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.
Anyone who praises the BB10 UI, I don't want to know or develop with. It's multitasking is hardly impressive, I have used a variety of new phones and I can honestly draw the comparison from my own testing. Android blows the Blackberry out of the water, through the roof and through the sky, it's actually very sad.
As for hiding under buttons and menu's, go into the Hub and press delete without opening a menu, when you can't do that, try to forward a message without going into a menu. If you, as a company, push new mobile innovation, make sure it's amazing and well laid out. BB10 has the chance to become ergonomic and usable but it's going to take a large UI redesign, in the way a user interfaces to the platform, that is what they badly messed up and that is what needs a massive overhaul.
I know approx, 7 people who raved about Blackberry, were very excited about BB10, were expecting to pick up the Z10 and Q10 and support the company. 6 of them, including my father, hate the Q10 and Z10 so much that they have now cursed the death of Blackberry. My dad's own words, "Fuck this horrible piece of shit, did anyone at the Blackberry even given a second though to the interface!" If you like the phones the cool but I personally, and many I know, hate them. I've heard the platform cursed about 10:1, as in for every 10 people who hate it, 1 likes it.
Actually I'm drawing my opinion based on the fact I've used the Q10, Z10 and Z30. I don't need to read articles, I've drawn my own conclusions based on experience.
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.
You know what's the worst "innovation" in mobile technology? The keyboard on iOS 7. Where the keys don't change when you are typing caps vs lower case.
That would be exactly the same then as any existing keyboard on any typewrite or computer. Changing the display of the keys would be just irritating. And obviously when it counts (symbols, numbers etc. ) the display does change.
Interesting.. I came from android to BB10 and it was a pleasant upgrade. Android just feels like a desktop OS crammed onto a phone. multi-tasking sucks, apps get randomly killed, the whole things slows down. Z10, especially upgraded to 10.2 OS is smooth as butter. I can switch between apps, settings, and messages with total ease. And rumor is that shortly you'll be able to install apps directly from the Play Store.
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 like my Q10 for work stuff, but frankly the Q10's keyboard is not as usable as the old bold. The main reason for this seems to be that the keys are mashed together. I noticed that a "Q5" is available (how do they come up with these numbers??), which has keys spaced in the more usable "chiclet" fashion.
Interesting you've have the exact opposite experience as me. I went from Android -> iOS - > Blackberry, quickly to, Android.
I found the Q10 keyboard springy to the point it's annoying, like a very very cheap desktop keyboard. It would be insane to suggest a mechanical keyboard for a phone but the Q10 / Q5 has a keyboard that feels so cheap and horrible it insults keyboards.
...how many of us knew this keyboard/case existed? It really is sad to see what has become of RIM/BlackBerry.
Im kind of torn about this one.
In one room, Blackberry's main innovations were the keyboard and having mail in your pocket. (BBM being a semi-third, but harder to operate) The mail in your pocket was a goldmine while it was unique, but they never saw themselves as a single trick pony but as BLACKBERRY with some kind of pixie dust magic, and never did much past this. Their vision was short sighted, and got massively run over by companies (google/android, Apple) that saw the computer-in-your-pocket thing better.
So... about the keyboard. Part of me "hey, just a keyboard" and how do you patent that? Part of me realizes that for all their faults, you can tell RIM/BlackBerry spent a lot of time/money specifically engineering that keyboard. Those curves really do help making the keys "bigger" than they are physically. The Typo is a pretty blatant copy (they'll get killed at trial where they're literally saying they want to take the keyboard from a blackberry). Shouldn't BlackBerry get some cash at least as R&D?
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.
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.
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*
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I had no idea he was still in the game!