Blackberry Goes Back To Its Roots: Sues Ryan Seacrest For Patent Infringement
from the innovators-vs.-litigators dept
Struggling also-ran Canadian maker of mobile phones, Blackberry (formerly, RIM), has quite a long history with patents. A decade ago, RIM actually was extremely aggressive in suing other companies for patent infringement. In fact, it can be reasonably argued that this was actually the beginning of the company's downfall. RIM had a somewhat dominant position in the early part of the 2000s, and then started suing pretty much every competitor (and lots of non-competitors) for patent infringement. In turn, that resulted in a bunch of other companies suing RIM, including the infamous case of the patent troll NTP, who eventually got $612.5 million out of RIM after a tremendously high-profile, years-long lawsuit that brought patent trolling to the attention of both the public and lawmakers. Of course, the guys behind NTP have admitted they only sued RIM after reading about its aggressive patent strategy first. But, more importantly, it seems clear that the aggressive lawsuits, both inbound and outbound, resulted in the company taking its eyes off the innovation ball, allowing basically everyone else to leapfrog way past it.As the company has been basically falling apart, we've fully expected it to go full on patent troll. After all, that's pretty much what you expect of legacy companies who've lost in the marketplace and can no longer figure out how to innovate. Instead, they basically start to litigate against anyone and everyone -- and RIM/Blackberry already has that sort of trait in its DNA anyway.
So it's little surprise to hear that the company has launched a silly lawsuit against Typo Products, a company formed (of all things) by TV personality Ryan Seacrest and others, creating a physical keyboard that can attach to the iPhone 5. Blackberry claims the company "blatantly copied Blackberry's keyboard." But, it's a keyboard. There are only so many ways you can make it, and honestly, if Blackberry wasn't so focused on lawsuits all these years, perhaps it could have realized years ago that maybe it should have been making physical keyboards for the smartphones that the public actually seemed to want.
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Filed Under: blackberry, competition, innovation, keyboards, patents, ryan seacrest
Companies: blackberry, rim, typo productions
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BTW, BB does make some very good products, but my experience is that its reliance on its proprietary OS in not exactly a strong selling point. Like it or not, for the time being iOS and Android rule the day, with Android increasing its lead on what seems like an hourly basis.
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Re:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/195600079/BlackBerry-vs-Typo-Patent-Suit-Main-Filing
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Really?
Revisionist history? Blackberry's issues have much more to do with having a proprietary network and way of doing things, and that they pretty much backed themselves into a corner by sticking with it no matter what. Their true failure isn't one of lawsuits, but rather in only making a half hearted attempt to meet the surge of Iphones and Android devices head on, with OS / firmware / screen top / phone design that pandered too much to their past and not enough to where people where going.
They didn't lack innovation, they jumped - in the wrong direction. Nothing in lawsuits changed that.
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Re: Really?
What did BB in had more to do with their caving to certain governments to allow them to eavesdrop on BB communications over that network. As soon as that happened, they lost their only real advantage. There was no longer any compelling reason to use Blackberries.
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I guess they could always try to come up with some photos from when Seacrest did that tech review show back in the 90s and share them around. The bleach-blonde hair just about glowed. (Funny that his bio has pretty much been scrubbed of that...)
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No, it's a keyboard that attaches to a PHONE! It's completely different!
It's like something that's blatantly obvious becoming genius innovation because you add the words "on the internet", nobody else could possibly have thought of this without stealing someone else's idea!
In all seriousness, I don't know the specifics of the hardware and lawsuit here and there might be something being sued about that's not the very simple idea of have a physical keyboard on a phone. If not, I can't help but wonder whether RIM would have a product at all if their predecessors had patented/copyrighted things like the QWERTY layout and shift key that they depend on for their own "innovation".
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And an 'internet anything' is, of course, something entirely different than a 'regular anything'.
Inno-fucking-vate me till I fart!
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They'll be remembered for kicking and screaming their way out of consumer's hands.
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Cyber-Keyboard
Case closed.
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Have you seen the keyboard?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/01/blackberry-sues-ryan-seacrest-firm-over-iphone-case-th at-looks-like-a-blackberry/
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Re: Have you seen the keyboard?
One thing that IS clear is that Blackberry would be better off expending their efforts elsewhere.
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Re: Re: Have you seen the keyboard?
The "patent" involved here is a design patent, not a functional (real) one. So it really is a trade dress issue.
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Re: Re: Re: Have you seen the keyboard?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Have you seen the keyboard?
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Re: Have you seen the keyboard?
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Do they really need a reason?
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Prior Art From The Mainframe Era.
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These patent lawsuits serve an important function
Now raise your hand if you are confused between a Blackberry device and an iPhone with a Typo keyboard attached. Anyone? Anyone?
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Re: These patent lawsuits serve an important function
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Re: Re: These patent lawsuits serve an important function
However, I think it's 100% wrong to call this a case of "ripping off" Blackberry. In what sense would this product deprive Blackberry of customers or revenue? Unless I'm mistaken, Blackberry does not manufacture add-on keyboards for other devices.
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Re: Re: Re: These patent lawsuits serve an important function
As for button shapes, size, spacing, etc., I think it might be useful to look at old VCR remotes, digital alarm clocks, etc. There were a lot of them manufactured in the 1980's, before the patent horizon. A VCR remote solves the same character input problem as a BlackBerry tablet computer-- it just doesn't do very much with the information received. You will find that, as a matter of sheer random chance, the remotes touched all the bases.
I have an old Radio Shack clock radio, dating from 1995, which has a snooze button of the same shape which Blackberry has patented. It is of course designed to be operated while half-asleep.
I also have an Emerson VCR-3002 Video Cassette Recorder, purchased about fifteen or twenty years ago. This VCR has a remote, and the remote has a numerical keyboard, base around the system of small buttons at comparatively large spacing, relative to the button size, so that the spacing between buttons can be approximately half of the diameter of a thumb.
I think that when you combine these references, you are in a fair way to having a BlackBerry keyboard.
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Classic Radio Shack Chronomatic 290 Am FM LED Alarm Clock Radio-- Instruction sheet, dated 5/8/95
http://support.radioshack.com/manuals/ome12-1590a.pdf
Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37954359@N08/4320416856/
NB. The butterfly on the top is a user modification. My radio does not have a butterfly.
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