Remember Typo? They were the Ryan Seacrest-backed company that released a case that gave your iPhone a BlackBerry-like QWERTY keypad.
Not so surprisingly, BlackBerry wasn’t happy. The company sued Typo for “blatantly copying” the BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard.
Now there’s good news for BlackBerry. The beleaguered smartphone maker is getting a much-needed cash injection as a result of the lawsuit, because Typo has been ordered to pay a nearly $1 million fine.
As you might recall, BlackBerry first argued back in March that the Typo Case for the iPhone was an “intentional and deliberate” copy of the BlackBerry keyboard: “The similarities between Typo’s iPhone case and the keyboard for BlackBerry’s Q10 smartphone are unmistakable,” said BlackBerry lawyer Kevin Johnson.
From the beginning, the judge seemed on BlackBerry’s side. “If the consumer can look at this and say this product is ripping off BlackBerry and knows it’s not a BlackBerry product, how does that make a difference in my analysis?” U.S. District Judge William Orrick said.
By August, Typo had changed its design substantially to avoid charges that it was violating BlackBerry’s patents. But the damage was done, and Orrick has now ordered Typo to pay BlackBerry $860,000 plus attorneys’ fees and costs for failing to heed a sales injunction handed down last March.
It’s not a total win for BlackBerry, though. Originally, BlackBerry wanted $2.64 billion in fines.
Will this kill Typo? It’s unknown, although reviews of the case have definitely not been positive. It sounds like it’s the only thing at this point that sucks more than a BlackBerry.
Source: Reuters
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
8 responses to “BlackBerry wins nearly $1 million in damages over Ryan Seacrest’s Typo iPhone case”
the only way Blackberry will ever make $1million now a days. LOL
Besides that is a drop in the bucket for Ryan .. he makes that with one episode of American Idol
It’s not about the money. It’s about the principle.
then Google and Samsung and every other phone and table maker should pay Apple..
Rectangular shape is not patented by Apple, nor can they even if they wanted to.
your missing my sarcasm.
And if we go by that logic, Apple should be paying the initial tablet computer makers for coming up with the idea of an all touch device without an on-board physical keyboard.
Lol they probably didn’t even sell enough to pay the fine but at the same time I HIGHLY doubt people didn’t buy a blackberry phones just because they can get an iPhone with a BB Styled case.
It is a QWERTY keyboard, what is there to infringe?