Research In Motion unveiled its new BlackBerry BBX operating system for future smartphones and tablets earlier this week. The new OS has hit its first bump on the road even before it has made it onto any devices. A US company called Basis International apparently holds the trademark on the “BBX” name. According to the company:
[It] has taken swift legal action to preserve and protect their longstanding ownership of the BBx® trademarked operating system independent language, database, and toolset. Research In Motion’s (RIM) press release announcing a new BlackBerry operating system (OS) named “BBX” is causing great confusion for the worldwide BASIS community and could potentially harm BASIS’ reputation for enabling cross-platform application development.
RIM quickly issued a response:
“RIM has not yet received a copy of the legal complaint described in Basis International’s press release, but we do not believe the marks are confusing, particularly since our respective companies are in different lines of business.”
A similar development occurred when Apple announced the original iPhone in January 2007. Cisco Systems sued Apple over a trademark infringement. The companies settled a few weeks later.
It looks like both companies’ lawyers will be busy for a while…