Reuters:
BlackBerry Ltd on Tuesday filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook Inc and its WhatsApp and Instagram apps, arguing that they copied technology and features from BlackBerry Messenger.
And:
“Defendants created mobile messaging applications that co-opt BlackBerry’s innovations, using a number of the innovative security, user interface, and functionality enhancing features,” Canada-based BlackBerry said in a filing with a Los Angeles federal court.
One of the patents in question covers the concept of a badge, that is, a changing number tied to an icon that reflect, for example, the current number of unread email messages.
Check out this thread from The Verge’s Nilay Patel:
https://twitter.com/reckless/status/971095505429319682
This has massive potential. Potential revenue for BlackBerry, and potential disruption for a raft of companies that will find themselves in court fighting this and other patents.
Yikes.
I guess Apple will have to remove UIApplication applicationIconBadgeNumber.
Blackberry turns to patent trolling. How the mighty have fallen
While I don’t agree with the move, Blackberry (RIM) did invent a lot of things before anyone else and they still do work in the technology field. They have fallen a long way, but they are also a long way from a company that purchases patents simply to monetize them.
Oh come on, suing on significant, useful IP is one thing. A BADGE? That’s neither useful nor significant. It’s crap like this that has convinced me that software patents should just not be allowed.
Patent trolling is what you do when you can’t compete on product quality.
Blackberry can’t compete on quality, so they’re weaponizing patents.
(Ones that, in the given example, should be struck on “obvious to a skilled practitioner” grounds.
“Put a number on a dot, rather than next to it”?
That is nothing deserving of a patent. That’s a trivial graphic design decision, not a “discovery” [per the Patent Clause, in US context] or a novel creation that needs incentivizing with a period of non-compete protection.
I’m a professional software developer, for context, and if this is the sort of thing we’re “patenting” I join Mr. Gregory on suggesting software patents should be simply abolished, if we can’t reform them to cover somehow only the truly novel and innovative, to provide their proper function of encouraging such developments.)
The wounded animal strikes back with its one remaining capability. I wonder if their in-house counsel thought of this, or if an outside firm pitched it to them.
RIM filed for this patent apparently in 2004. Yet any longtime OSX user would remember this feature in iOS actually comes from the Mac. OSX has been badging the Mail icon since the very beginning.