“Over the years, BlackBerry has amassed a giant portfolio of patents, but it hasn’t used them to sue others — until now,” Joe Mullin reports for Ars Technica. “BlackBerry has filed three patent infringement lawsuits in as many weeks. The struggling phone company’s offensive barrage began with a case filed against IP telephony company Avaya on July 27. Last week, BlackBerry filed two lawsuits against budget cell phone maker BLU’s products, alleging that BLU infringes a whopping 15 patents.”
“The dual lawsuits against BLU suggest that BlackBerry’s new turn toward patent licensing isn’t going to be a one-off event, but rather a more extended campaign,” Mullin reports. “In a May earnings call, BlackBerry CEO John Chen told investors he’s in a ‘patent licensing mode’ and is hoping to monetize his company’s 38,000 patents.”
“The new lawsuits also suggest that BlackBerry has patents it believes describe Android features, so don’t be surprised if more Android phones are in the crosshairs soon,” Mullin reports. “One of the two cases filed last week accuses user-interface features that are more about Android than they are about BLU. A small manufacturer like BLU could make for a good ‘test case’ against a maker of Android phones.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This make sense, of course, since Android is a BlackBerry clone that was hastily rejiggered at the last minute by a panicked Google to mimic Apple’s revolutionary iPhone. Obviously, mistakes were made and corners were cut everywhere. As such, beyond being a privacy and security nightmare, Android is a patent-infringing, IP-trampling rush-job. It’s crap-by-committee, lowest-common-denominator, fragmented junk.
Hey, it’s about time, Beleaguered BlackBerry! Finally!
Here’s what Google’s Android looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:
SEE ALSO:
How Google reacted when Steve Jobs revealed the revolutionary iPhone – December 19, 2013
Apple to ITC: Android started at Apple while Andy Rubin worked for us – September 2, 2011
I see both these cases were filed in judicial districts where Lucy Koh is not a judge. Maybe Blackberry can actually get some justice
If you can’t sell phones you might as well try to reinvent yourself as a patent troll.
It’s not clear if this fits the patent trolling definition. BlackBerry actually make things. They may well be using these patents themselves in their products. Meanwhile, patent trolls merely own patents and do nothing with them except use them as weapons in lawsuits in pursuit of money.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, how long before we get a new MacBook Pro that actually has some significant user interface improvements that lets us do more with less time.
The acceleration of the death spiral.
Blackberry is finished.