BlackBerry Ratchets Up Fight vs Seacrest’s Typo With New Complaint

BlackBerry ratcheted up its fight with Ryan Seacrest’s Typo Products LLC, filing a new complaint that alleges that the company’s new keyboard case for the iPhone also infringes on its patents.

Last March, the Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone pioneer won an injunction against the first iteration of the Typo case made for some of Apple’s iPhone devices. BlackBerry is now seeking another injunction to halt sales of the redesigned Typo 2 case as well.

BlackBerry, in a new complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Monday, alleges that the company’s redesigned Typo 2 case for the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s and iPhone 6 models, also infringe on its patents, disputing the start-up’s claims to the contrary.

Earlier this month, the court ordered Typo to pay BlackBerry $860,600 (roughly Rs. 5.3 crores) in sanctions, plus attorneys’ fees and costs as it said that Typo had blatantly violated the court’s initial injunction.

At the time, a spokeswoman for Typo said the court order had no impact on its TYPO 2 product currently in the marketplace, or its other planned product releases.

Typo was not immediately reachable for comment on the latest complaint. BlackBerry declined to comment on the matter.

“Just as they did with the Typo Keyboard, defendants have again copied numerous proprietary BlackBerry designs and patents in the Typo2 Keyboard,” said BlackBerry in its complaint.

The new BlackBerry complaint is case no. 3:15-cv-715 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

© Thomson Reuters 2015