Some interesting news has reached us from the “new world” which actually goes back to February 4, 2015 when the District Court for the Northern District of California, in BlackBerry Limited v Typo Products LLC, ordered that Typo Products must pay US$ 860,600 to BlackBerry for violating a court order.

By way of background, in January 2014, Typo Products introduced a physical keyboard designed to be attached to an iPhone 5 or 5s.  BlackBerry started court proceedings against Typo Products, arguing that the keyboard infringed their IP rights.  In particular, BlackBerry sued Typo Products for infringement of U.S. Design Patent no. D685,775.  The underlying BlackBerry Q10 device, the ‘775 design patent and the allegedly infringing keyboard are shown below.

From a European perspective, it is interesting to study this case in more detail in order to learn more about similarities and differences in international design law (read more here).

This item was specially prepared for Class 99 by our friend and colleague Henning Hartwig.