RIM blocked from naming new BlackBerry OS 'BBX

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 07 December 2011 12:55

IT Industry - Strategy

US software company, BASIS International, has secured a temporary restraining order preventing Research In Motion from using the term BBX to denote its upcoming operating system.

RIM announced BBX in October. It will be based on software from QNX, acquired by RIM in mid 2010 and will be common to both future BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets. However RIM has given no indication of when it will become available.

BBx is however a registered trademark of BASIS and the name it has used for it software products since 1985, according to Wikipedia. BASIS registered the trademark - for "Computer programs and associated documentation providing tools and programming language to enable software developers to create and prepare business, internet, and applications software." - only in 2005.

The TRO specifically prohibits RIM from using the term at its Asian app developer conference, DevCon' on December 7-8 in Singapore - and will no doubt require some pretty serious work by RIM to expunge it from any notes, presentations and demo software. It was granted by a US Federal Court in Albuquerque.

According to BASIS "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' 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.'

"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'."