Following a US District Judge in San Francisco ordering Typo to pay BlackBerry $860,000, the Ryan Seacrest-backed company now faces another suit from the Canadian smartphone maker for continuing to sell its iPhone case with an integrated hardware keyboard.
The Hollywood Reporter says that BlackBerry has filed a new complaint against Typo in California this week claiming the company’s latest products “slavishly copied…down to the smallest detail, including the layout of the keyboard itself, the shapes of the keys, and the surface sculpting of the keys.”
When news of the previous ruling broke, Typo said it would continue selling its latest keyboard case products and that any lawsuits with BlackBerry do not relate to the design of its latest generation of Typo 2 products. Not so fast, says BlackBerry, with the new complaint specifically targeting the second generation product line:
More on the lawsuit at The Hollywood Reporter.
“Just as they did with the Typo Keyboard, Defendants have again copied numerous proprietary BlackBerry designs and patents in the Typo2 Keyboard,” states the complaint. “The Typo2 Keyboard still blatantly copies BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard trade dress designs that have been embodied in numerous BlackBerry smartphones from the 2007 BlackBerry 8800 to the current Q10 and Classic models. The Typo2 Keyboard also infringes numerous BlackBerry utility patents related to BlackBerry’s proprietary keyboard design, backlighting and typing automation technologies.”
