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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?
it's way better for longer inputs.. 'cause you can see what you type and go by feel.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
it's way better for longer inputs.. 'cause you can see what you type and go by feel.
That would explain why I didn't think much of it - I didn't use it for nearly long enough to be able to type by feel.
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.
Give me a choice between the touch-screen keyboard and a physical, I will pick the physical almost every time. (It would have to be a pretty bad physical keyboard for me to pick the touch-screen one...) I've used the Blackberry keyboards since the beginning of Blackberry. They've always been better than the touch-screen versions (Blackberry, Android, iOS, all of them). (Of course, this is all IMHO)
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...
Litigation.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I used to be like that as well (although never liked the BlackBerry keyboards). Swype on Android changed my mind in a big way.
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
I don't know what qualifies as a "decent" touchscreen, but if they're out there I've never found one. I have never found a touchscreen that I was able to use without at least two typos per sentence. Large hands + small keys = no fun.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
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.
It took me a long time to finally upgrade from a slider phone with a physical keyboard to one without. The physical keyboard gives tactile feedback and is much less sensitive to fat-fingered typing than any on-screen keyboard I've used... both of which make typing considerably faster. I would have gotten another slider phone, but they don't seem to make them anymore except for a few very low-end models.
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.
It is all about how the keys look, not that it is a keyboard. The beveling on the keys are made to make it easier to type with your thumbs. I see the novelty in it, but am not sure it should be patentable. Look for yourself:
http://typokeyboards.com/
http://www.dogtownmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/blackberry-mobile-acquired.jpg
I have to second this ... I can type faster with Swype on a touch screen than I can with the key-press on the virtual keyboard.
Obviously, nowhere near as fast as I can with a full-sized keyboard, but the spell out the word in a continuous motion works really well for me.
My mother in law can't do it, because she finds she has to think about the key locations (she touch types, but doesn't consciously know where the keys are). For me, I think it's a pretty nice way to type.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I used to be like that as well (although never liked the BlackBerry keyboards). Swype on Android changed my mind in a big way.
Exact opposite for me. I tried "swyping" for about 30 seconds before purging it from my phone with extreme prejudice. Regular QWERTY on a touchscreen is bad enough. I really want my H/W keyboard back.
I am not a crackpot.
Yeah, recently used my mother-in-law's phone over the holidays, and I have to say that I abhor the Apple keyboard. The keys always show upper case letters, which comping from somebody who's used to Android, I found this quite annoying. The only difference between "shift" being pressed is whether or not the arrow is filled in, and I can't tell you if filled in arrow means that the shift key is on or off.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
...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?
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.
At least with the bb keys you can feel where the edge of the key is. With a touchscreen you can't even SEE the edge of the key because your damn finger is in the way!
Your loss. 30 Seconds isn't enough. Heck a full day isn't enough. I used swype for a week and was hooked. Micro Keyboards were barely functional for me, and now, I can't even stand not having swype. I picked up an iPad and instinctively tried to swype and was horrified to go back to hunt n peck typing.
"A keyboard ... how quaint!"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
you sound, like you never used t9.
The funniest T9 autocorrect was typing "onsite", it came up with "morgue". Imaging telling your boss "I'm morgue."
It took some adjusting but I do like Swype / Google Keyboard's equivalent. I do dread going to my iPod's hunt and peck keyboard.
30 seconds is not long enough. I gave it a few days of feeling a bit awkward before it became natural. Now you can pry it from my cold dead thumb.