A Bloomberg report said today that Typo Products LLC has sought a ruling from a US judge over BlackBerry Ltd's claims to its flagship product. Ryan Seacrest's company, of which he is listed as founder of based on the company's website, sells a mobile phone accessory that allows Apple's iPhones and iPhone 5s to equip them with keyboards similar to that of a BlackBerry. The mobile phone accessory retails at $99 apiece.
The news agency said that BlackBerry's response to Typo was considerable, noting the fact that the Canadian smartphone maker had lost much of its market share from Apple, among the other mobile phone leaders. IDC figures showed that BlackBerry's global market share in the third quarter was a mere 1.7% compared to 4.1% from the same period last year. Bloomberg said the Canadian firm wanted the court to stop Typo from selling its wares as the former could suffer irreparable harm should the latter continue with its sales.
Typo's motion to halt BlackBerry from hampering its operations involved a court order to stop the Canadian firm from enforcing patents that the latter insisted that are valid, said the news agency. Typo told the federal court in San Francisco yesterday that it has not infringed any of its patents it reported infringed. Typo also said that there was no infringement as the inventors failed to disclose that the Smith Corona Spell Mate 30 and the Smith Corona Spell Right 200 had already included the patented design in 1988 prior to the US Patent and Trademark Office approving the Blackberry patent in question. Thus, Typo argued that Blackberry's patent claims did not comply with the legal requirements for patentability, according to the company's court request filed yesterday.
Earlier on January 14, Typo said that it has already sold all of its first batch of its inventory and that the orders the company had received before January 12 will be delivered to customers by the end of the month. Bloomberg also quoted the tech company, which said that new orders will be going out at the end of this month.
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