UPDATE: Facebook reached out to us and offered the following statement from Paul Grewal, its deputy general counsel:
“Blackberry’s suit sadly reflects the current state of its messaging business. Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, Blackberry is now looking to tax the innovation of others. We intend to fight.”
ORIGINAL: It feels like it's been a while since there have been any major lawsuits between major mobile companies, but that's changing today.
BlackBerry has filed a lawsuit against Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram divisions. BlackBerry feels that Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have infringed on its patents, claiming that they made "competing applications that improperly used BlackBerry's mobile messaging intellectual property."
BlackBerry spokesperson Sarah McKinney shared this statement regarding this new lawsuit:
“We have a strong claim that Facebook has infringed on our intellectual property, and after several years of dialogue, we also have an obligation to our shareholders to pursue appropriate legal remedies."
According to BlackBerry's complaint, which was shared by The Verge, its patents include cryptographic tech for protecting users' privacy, the mixture of mobile gaming and messaging, and user interface features for mobile messaging services like notifcation design, message timestamps, and tagging people in photos. The company is looking to get "redress for the harm caused by Defendants' unlawful use of BlackBerry's intellectual property".
The BlackBerry Messenger platform used to be one of the most popular ways to communicate on mobile devices, but in recent years, services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp have taken over. We'll have to wait and see what comes of this lawsuit between BlackBerry, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, but considering the parties and platforms involved, it'll definitely be interesting to see what happens.
Have you ever used BlackBerry Messenger?
