BlackBerry Pushing For Immediate Ban Of Typo Keyboard Sales

Earlier this year, BlackBerry filed a lawsuit against Typo over the design of the latter’s keyboard accessory for the iPhone. It’s easy to see why, after all while there are plenty of keyboard cases for the iPhone, none of them comes this close to resembling the keyboard design used for BlackBerry handsets.

Thanks to an initial ruling, BlackBerry managed to obtain an injunction against Typo which would call for the accessory manufacturer to cease sales of the offending product. However there is a caveat which is that BlackBerry needs to post a bond by this Friday if they want the injunction to go into effect.

The bond is meant to cover possible lost of sales to Typo should the company eventually win the hearing. BlackBerry has yet to pay the bond but according to reports, the Canadian company is pushing for an immediate ban of the Typo accessory, claiming that Typo had misled the courts on how it handles its business.

According to the filing BlackBerry made with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, “Typo has contradicted its prior sworn statements and has significantly changed the way it does business in an attempt to flood the market with infringing keyboards before entry of the injunction.”

This need for the haste of the injunction was brought about when BlackBerry had discovered Typo keyboards on sale at LAX (via PC World), which BlackBerry claims is a change in the ways that Typo was doing business and going as far as suggesting that they are doing a fire sale to get as many keyboards out as possible ahead of the injunction. “Rather than taking pre-orders and shipping upon availability as it did in the past, Typo very recently began offering same day shipping at no extra charge for customers purchasing the Typo Keyboard from its website.”

BlackBerry has also requested that the bond they have to pay be no more than $500,000, a request which the judge seems to agree with, “The amount of bond requested by Typo is wildly inappropriate given the relatively limited sales activity that Typo represented to the Court had occurred to date.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: BlackBerry, Legal, typo