RIM gives up on BBX name after court order
BBX trademark already belonged to US software company
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A US court has granted a temporary restraining order banning Research in Motion from using the name BBX for its new operating system.
Software firm BASIS International filed for infringement of the trademark last month and the court granted the injunction yesterday, saying:
BASIS is likely to prevail on its trademark infringement claim as BASIS holds incontestable federally registered trademarks covering the BBX mark and consumers are likely to be confused by RIM’s use of BBX in connection with RIM’s goods and services.
Although this ruling is just a temporary ban, it looks like RIM is giving up the fight for the trademarked name.
“RIM doesn't typically comment on pending litigation, however RIM has already unveiled a new brand name for its next generation mobile platform,” the company said in a statement.
“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.
“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.”
It’s not a good sign that the new OS, meant to revive the company’s flagging fortunes, is already running into issues, as investor and consumer confidence in the firm is dropping after a few months of very bad luck.
The company has had to announce a $485m charge in the third quarter to help it clear a mountain of unsold PlayBooks after its fondleslab attempt failed to set the world on fire. And just this week, RIM’s former head in Indonesia became a suspect for negligence in the case of a stampede at a promotional event for a new BlackBerry launch.
With the huge three-day outage of its BlackBerry services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa still fresh in folks’ minds as well, the company has taken a pounding in the markets as investors wonder if it can pull itself out of its current slump. ®
COMMENTS
Nothing wrong with the name QNX
A lot classier than BBX, for sure. And it had a good reputation, though not one the man on the street would know off the top of his head. And if you buy a company for its product and its reputation, isn't then changing the name, well, stupid?
Yes, a big problem
Sure, if the issue were just the name, it would be a big "meh". But that's not the issue.
The issue is the bungled handling of what should have been an exciting reboot for the brand. Instead what they delivered was:
step 1: Fail to do the most basic [sic] due diligence on the name, like, say, checking the Wikipedia entry
step 2: Launch new name very publicly at DevCon
step 3: oops
step 4: announce new new name, try to convince everybody that this name is much better because it is "aligned with the devices" and "leverages the tremendous brand recognition of Blackberry"... which immediately prompts the question of why they ever thought BBX was a good name in the first place?
So I guess if you think that the only important thing is bits and bytes, then yeah, no biggie. But if you understand that there's more to business than code, this is one more example in a pattern of blunders.
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