Troubled smartphone maker BlackBerry (BBRY) won a preliminary injunction on Friday that bans Typo Products LLC, a company backed by “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, from selling its $99 iPhone case, after a judge ruled that TV host’s startup had “likely infringed” on BlackBerry’s patents.
Reuters reports that US. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said that the Canadian smartphone maker, which sued over the design of the case earlier this year, had established a “likelihood” of proving that Typo infringed on several of the company’s patents and its “iconic” keyboard design, while mentioning that Seacrest’s co. had not sufficiently challenged the patents in question.
Objectively speaking, Typo had nothing to defend nor challenge. The company’s keyboard for recent iPhone models is a spitting image of BlackBerry’s keyboard.
“This ruling will help prevent further injury to BlackBerry from Typo’s blatant theft of our patented keyboard technology,” a spokeswoman for BlackBerry said.
The preliminary injunction prohibits Typo from the sale of its keyboard, which is still available on the company’s web store for the time being.
Judge Orrick’s ruling is part of the relief sought by Blackberry.
Typo said it was disappointed and plans to appeal the decision.
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Since the court has deemed this product “a blatant copy of several Blackberry patentso”, how can they still sell their product to the public without being prosecuted?
Isn’t that why Blackberry took them to court to begin with? To stop the production & sale of products that infringe on the Blackberry patents?