BBX Renamed to BlackBerry 10 After RIM Barred from Using BBX Name

Posted By Ray Nicolini

Now this is a sad day for RIM marketing. After solid names like the Bold and Curve and a very promising BBX name for the future BlackBerry QNX based platform we have RIM changing things again. BASIS has put out a press release that a US Federal court in Albuquerque has banned RIM from using the BBX name. That means RIM was immediately barred from using the BBX trademark at BlackBerry DevCon in Singapore.

That has not stopped RIM and they have now renamed BBX as BlackBerry 10 for RIM’s next generation smartphones. I guess RIM sees the need to jump directly from 7 to 10 but I think they should have gone with a totally different naming scheme. Still BlackBerry 10 is not a bad name but my guess is people will still call it BBX. 

Press release from Basis below:

US Federal Court Bars RIM (BlackBerry) from Using BASIS’ BBX Trademark

The United States Federal Court in Albuquerque today granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Research in Motion (RIM), immediately barring RIM from using BASIS International Ltd.’s incontestable federally registered BBX trademark at RIM’s Asian DevCon on December 7-8 in Singapore.

BASIS’ BBX running on a sampling of mobile devices available at http://links.basis.com/buidemos (Photo: Business Wire)

RIM had refused BASIS’ requests to stop the infringement at the DevCon conference, which resulted in BASIS filing for the TRO.

In rejecting RIM’s arguments against the issuance of a TRO, the court found that, “The BBX mark is identical to the mark which RIM is allegedly using to present its BBX product (TRO page 8).” and “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 (TRO page 9).” The court went on to concur with BASIS that “The alleged infringement is likely to cause customers and prospective customers to wrongly believe that the software applications created using BASIS’s development tools are only compatible with RIM’s BBX operating system (TRO page 11).”

The order described how the “Courts use a well-established four-part test to decide whether to grant injunctive relief (TRO page 7)” and concluded that “Accordingly, after considering all the factors relative to a determination of whether an injunction should be granted, the Court finds that all factors weigh in favor of BASIS (TRO page 8).”

See BASIS’ latest generation of BBX in action by running the sample restaurant tip calculator and home mortgage calculator applications from links.basis.com/buidemos to experience BASIS’ BBX platform-independent solutions on your own smartphone or tablet.