Remember the very familiar looking QWERTY keyboard accessory for the iPhone 5/5S called Typo? BlackBerry filed a lawsuit against the accessory earlier this year and the judge has just announced the Canadian company’s lawsuit is “likely to prevail”, thus giving Typo a temporary sales ban.
When Typo was first announced late last year by Ryan Seacrest, the keyboard accessory attracted a lot of attention around the world for being a brilliant solution for touchscreen users, and for looking very familiar. If you can recall the BlackBerry Q10’s keyboard, the Typo looks almost identical, making BlackBerry worried about the company’s future. After months, the company finally convinced the judge that the keyboard might have infringed on its patents and Bloomberg reports that the judge said that the Canadian smartphone manufacturer is “likely to prevail” on the infringement claims.
“BlackBerry has convincingly shown that BlackBerry’s keyboard designs are a key driver of demand and goodwill for Blackberry phones. Typo’s keyboard directly targets the segment of smartphone users that prefer a physical keyboard, the market in which BlackBerry competes.” – U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco.
As for things at Typo, the company wrote in an email that they will appeal the order and that the company will continue to make and sell innovative products that busy people can’t live without. Interested to get yourself a Typo keyboard for your iPhone 5/5S? You can still do so actually, at Typo’s website, but you’ll have to pay extra for shipment and no, they don’t ship directly to Malaysia.
