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More Trouble for RIM as it Announces New Operating System
Research In Motion (RIM) is facing legal action over alleged trademark infringement from the software firm BASIS International Ltd. based in New Mexico. The maker of Blackberry smartphones has chosen the name BBX for its new operating system that was announced last week in San Francisco. However, BASIS has already trademarked the name “BBx” for its own software development products. The firm announced that it sent RIM a cease and desist letter with a response deadline of October 31st, and hinted at taking things further should RIM fail to comply with its demand. It followed up on its threat on October 24th, filing a complaint with the Federal Court of Albuquerque against RIM.
RIM reacted to the news of a possible lawsuit in a statement, saying it has not yet received a copy of the legal complaint. RIM maintains that the two trademarks are sufficiently different not to cause confusion, particularly since the two companies are not in the same line of business. BASIS, however, has reported receiving numerous inquiries from its clients, who are mainly concentrated in the US and South America, expressing confusion about the RIM BBX introduction.
This is the latest episode in what has been a difficult time for RIM. RIM is just recovering from a three day global Blackberry outage, which caused embarrassment on top of its ongoing poor market performance. Although the trademark lawsuit may never translate into full blown litigation, it nevertheless comes at an unfortunate time for RIM.
For additional information, please visit:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/rim-could-face-lawsuit-over-bbx-moniker/article2208223/
http://moconews.net/article/419-basis-makes-good-on-blackberry-bbx-trademark-threat/