BlackBerry is suing Typo Products–a new iPhone keyboard company started by TV host Ryan Seacrest, media and real estate mogul Laurence Hallier and others–for allegedly copying BlackBerry’s keyboard design. Typo’s $99 physical keyboard case–also called Typo–attaches to Apple’s iPhone 5 and 5S.
Typo Keyboard said in a statement that it plans to defend itself in court. “Although we respect Blackberry and its intellectual property, we believe that Blackberry’s claims against Typo lack merit and we intend to defend the case vigorously,” the company told tech website The Verge. The company also said that it would still be shipping pre-orders later in January.
Back in 2002, BlackBerry also sued “PDA-phone” pioneer Handspring over the similarity of its phones’ physical keyboards to BlackBerry phones, and Handspring ended up licensing BlackBerry’s keyboard patents.
This week, BlackBerry also announced new executive hires, notably former HTC America CSO Ron Louks as BlackBerry’s new President of Devices and Emerging Solutions. Most recently, Louks has been CEO of the The OpenNMS Group, and before that, he served as Chief Strategy Officer of HTC America and the Chief Technology Officer at Sony Ericsson. Louks will report directly to BlackBerry’s new Executive Chair and CEO, John Chen.
“Ron will focus on BlackBerry’s long-term product road map, including hardware, software, and design, as well as the company’s joint development efforts,” Chen said in a statement.
BlackBerry has also hired on James S. Mackey as Executive Vice President for Corporate Development and Strategic Planning, and Mark Wilson as Senior Vice President of Marketing. In December, BlackBerry also added former SAP executive John Sims as the head of the company’s Global Enterprise Services division.
BlackBerry’s new executive team is part of the embattled company’s efforts to steer it out of the crash course it’s been on over the past few years. Although former CEO Thorsten Heins tried his hand at righting the company through massive layoffs, facility closures, and new BlackBerry 10 devices, Heins was unable to stop the bleeding enough for the company’s board to ask him to resign.
