RIM gets banned from using BBX name

CANADIAN MOBILE MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) cannot use the name BBX for its Blackberry operating system (OS), thanks to a lawsuit from a firm that used the acronym first.

Basis International has emerged victorious in the battle for the name BBX, meaning that RIM will have to take the time to think of something else to call its OS. Perhaps it will drop back to using incremental numbers, as this works for most companies.

According to Basis International it approached RIM at Devcon about its use of the name, and asked it to stop using it. This failed so it turned to the courts, which heard its arguments.

The US District Court in Albuquerque granted a temporary restraining order against the use of the name yesterday.

The court found, "The BBX mark is identical to the mark which RIM is allegedly using to present its BBX product," according to a statement from Basis, and said that "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 agreed with Basis that the alleged infringement could confuse customers, and could lead some to think that software created by Basis was only compatible with RIM's BBX operating system.

We have asked RIM to comment.

Update
RIM told us that it does not usually comment on ongoing court cases, but did provide some comment and confirmed that it would be using the Blackberry 10 name.

"RIM doesn't typically comment on pending litigation, however RIM has already unveiled a new brand name for its next generation mobile platform. As announced at DevCon Asia, RIM plans to use the "BlackBerry 10" brand name for its next generation mobile platform, which will bring the best of the BlackBerry and QNX platforms to customers and partners," it said.

"The BlackBerry 10 name reflects the significance of the new platform and will leverage the global strength of the BlackBerry brand while also aligning perfectly with RIM's device branding." µ