RIM Loses BBX Trademark Fight, Will Name New OS BlackBerry 10
Research In Motion (RIM) was forced to relinquish their plans of naming the next BlackBerry operating system “BBX” after a US Federal Court ruled against the manufacturer. “BBX” is currently being used by BASIS International for their software, and the US Federal Court intends to keep it that way.
Consequently, RIM has announced at BlackBerry DevCon Asia that their next operating system will be called BlackBerry 10 instead. We can only hope that RIM pulls BlackBerry 10 together by giving its loyal consumers a unified platform they can rely on, and more importantly soon. Continue reading for the full press release.
December 06, 2011 09:18 PM Eastern Time
US Federal Court Bars RIM (BlackBerry) from Using BASIS’ BBX TrademarkALBUQUERQUE, N.M.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The United States Federal Court in Albuquerque today granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Research in Motion (RIM), immediately barring RIM from using BASIS International Ltd.’s incontestable federally registered BBX trademark at RIM’s Asian DevCon on December 7-8 in Singapore.
RIM had refused BASIS’ requests to stop the infringement at the DevCon conference, which resulted in BASIS filing for the TRO.
In rejecting RIM’s arguments against the issuance of a TRO, the court found that, “The BBX mark is identical to the mark which RIM is allegedly using to present its BBX product (TRO page 8).” and “despite the fact that the two companies are not direct competitors, the parties’ respective BBX products are highly related and target the same class of consumers, that is, business application software developers (TRO page 9).” The court went on to concur with BASIS that “The alleged infringement is likely to cause customers and prospective customers to wrongly believe that the software applications created using BASIS’s development tools are only compatible with RIM’s BBX operating system (TRO page 11).”
The order described how the “Courts use a well-established four-part test to decide whether to grant injunctive relief (TRO page 7)” and concluded that “Accordingly, after considering all the factors relative to a determination of whether an injunction should be granted, the Court finds that all factors weigh in favor of BASIS (TRO page 8).”
See BASIS’ latest generation of BBX in action by running the sample restaurant tip calculator and home mortgage calculator applications from links.basis.com/buidemos to experience BASIS’ BBX platform-independent solutions on your own smartphone or tablet.
About BASIS
BASIS International Ltd. is a global software company whose software developer community is a worldwide network of partners for whom the BASIS “BBx Generations” of products form the foundation for proven and reliable software solutions. Since 1985, BASIS’ mission has been to blaze a trail by producing ambitious and innovative programming languages, database products, development tools, and an application framework for their community to build upon. BASIS is committed to delivering platform independence to the server and client, including browser-based mobile clients.
