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Typo Keyboard For iPhone Faces Sales Ban
time_lords_almanac (3527081) writes "BlackBerry is trying to put the kibosh on the Typo, a physical keyboard attachment for iPhone. And they've won the first round, in the form of a sales ban on the attachment. From the article: '"BlackBerry is pleased that its motion for a preliminary injunction against Typo Products LLC was granted. This ruling will help prevent further injury to BlackBerry from Typo's blatant theft of our patented keyboard technology," a spokeswoman for BlackBerry told the news agency in an email.'"
Because, you know, physical keyboards are such an advancing field.... I can't imagine how awful keyboards would be with out BlackBerry's patented technology.
Did you even look at the article? That keyboard looks like a blackberry keyboard to me. It's a blatant ripoff of the design. While I think software patents are absurd, this is a copy of a physical device.
Beveled Keys have been in use since the HP 35 calculator. The HP35 was HP's very first calculator and the first iterations only had printing on a few of the keys -- the rest of the key designations were printed on the board the keys protruded through. The HP41 (early to mid 1980's) had a full alphabet keyboard as well as punctuation and all the keys were beveled. As I understand the patent, it should be thrown out due to prior art or at least obviousness since all the HP keys were beveled.
At the twilight of our civilization, endless patent and copyright fights over obvious things. A keyboard at the bottom rather than the side of a phone? Obviously this is a precious work of genius that must be protected at all costs. Soon someone will make a new generation of 8K HDTV's and they will patent "the use of a remote control with 8K HDTV's" When will someone see through this horseshit and revoke these stupid patents.
"Beveled Keys have been in use since the HP 35 calculator. The HP35 was HP's very first calculator and the first iterations only had printing on a few of the keys -- the rest of the key designations were printed on the board the keys protruded through. The HP41 (early to mid 1980's) had a full alphabet keyboard as well as punctuation and all the keys were beveled. As I understand the patent, it should be thrown out due to prior art or at least obviousness since all the HP keys were beveled."
There exists a thing called a "design patent" which prevents others from copying your style. I could be wrong, but I suspect that is what is at issue here.
You mean it's possible for someone to destroy Blackberry faster than Blackberry has done itself?
I wish they would just die with a little grace and accept that they world will be better off without them
Ya, like SCO did - oh, wait... :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Nobody decides to buy a BB solely based upon a hardware keyboard.
Probably could have stopped w/"nobody decides to buy a BB"
They have gone further than just putting a keyboard on the iphone, see pic:
http://www.macrumors.com/2014/...
They've copied the shape of the keys, the horizontal bars between the keys etc.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Why would they name a keyboard "typo"? Even as an amusing meta-reference, it falls flat.
It's like trying to sell a toilet paper named "Anal Scraper".
Android and iOS give the buying public what they want. Apple is continuing its personal computer paradigm of having an OS that goes with their somewhat more upscale hardware and Android has essentially pulled a Windows and been the "clone" OS to use. Both offer fairly sophisticated suites of interconnected applications that also tie-in well to computers.
I honestly couldn't tell you what Blackberry does. And that's their biggest problem.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
After playing the role of plaintiff in multiple patent lawsuits concerning relatively miniscule design innovations, the double-edged sword that is the US patent system is now seemingly also willing to slice the apple.
Perhaps the only hope for reform of the patent system relies on it becoming inconvenient even for it's former proponents?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
this isn't about patents or saving blackberry, it's about stopping ryan seacrest. he's the one behind the kardasshians for heaven's sake. set aside your petty libertarian and socialist differences and unite against tyranny of another more diabolical sort!
Blackberry sells the only device "owned" by the corporation. Secure end to end encryption, owned by the owner, not a cloud provider. It's a walled garden where the owner of the device owns the walls and the garden. It's security-focused enterprise/government that keeps it going. If you aren't one of them, there's no reason to consider it. I know a few home users that have them. The last one had to use an android phone for 2 weeks. He never turned his Blackberry on again.
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, it is "oooh so innovative". There's a reason why everyone raved about the quality of their keyboards, you know.
Ever try to type, well, anything on a Motorola Droid Pro or Palm Pre? There's obviously a lot more here than just "shaped keys".
Required reading for internet skeptics
The HP35 was HP's very first calculator
Wrong. There were HP calculators before the HP35. HP made desktop calculators that sported a small CRT display. I used to have one. It had core memory in it. It had no ICs at all. Hundreds and hundreds of diodes.
Gotta side with BlackBerry on this one.
...have been around for years.
Keyboards like this one...
http://0.tqn.com/d/ipod/1/0/w/...
However, one look at the "Typo" tells you that it's a blatant BB ripoff. If you want / need a keyboard like that, buy a 'Berry.
This is being blown way out of proportion here. Filing the infringement lawsuit and winning the injunction was the first step towards making a deal. With the injunction in hand Blackberry has demonstrated to Seacrest and his investors that this is serious, but they've also left open the way to a deal. This would probably take the form of royalty payments from Typo to Blackberry for each case sold, the amount to be negotiated after agreement in principle to pay royalties. The remaining Blackberry shareholders are hard core professional investors and financial types now, not technologists, so they will be eager to squeeze any money they can out of the patent portfolio even if that cannibalizes a few Blackberry sales down the road.
HP35 keyboard
Side-by-side Typo vs Blackberry keyboard
The HP35 isnt even close, and the Typo is a blatant ripoff. I hate patent trolls as much as the next guy, but come on, theres not even room for debate here. Theyre EXACTLY the same. Even ALT and Shift are in the same spots, and the numbers-- which have generally gone across the top on other phones-- are laid out the same way.
Why? Because I'm stockpiling in the event that TYPO goes belly-up. Using a Typo-keyboard with my iPhone is the finest mobile phone experience available and I am loathe to go back to a glass keyboard. I had a death grip on my Blackberry but I switched to iPhone a few years ago for reasons too numerous to list. I tried a few keyboard cases for iPhone. Although not perfect, the Typo is by far the best of the lot. Using it allows me to have the whole iPhone screen visible. I can thumb type quickly and accurately and avoid iPhone autocorrect hell. I live in the most densely populated area of New York City, where everyone is in a hurry and good percentage of them are morons. People have asked about my phone with the keyboard but no one has ever confused it with a Blackberry. As previously posted, Blackberry could have come out with a similar keyboard bundled with BBM for iPhone and the most popular android devices years ago. Had they done so, they might just be making money now. This is a fine example of a moribund company reaching up from the grave to drag a really great product down with it.