Ryan Seacrest owes BlackBerry $860,000 for selling an iPhone keyboard that ripped off BlackBerry's design
Flickr/Andy Castro Ryan Seacrest
Ryan Seacrest thought he had a genius idea.
He got an iPhone but missed the keyboard on his Blackberry. So he launched Typo, an iPhone case that has a keyboard built in.
Typo was popular. Pre-orders on the $99 case sold out quickly. But a few months after its launch, Blackberry filed an injunction against the startup for infringing on the company's patents.
" We are flattered by the desire to graft our keyboard onto other smartphones, but we will not tolerate such activity without fair compensation for using our intellectual property and our technological innovations," Blackberry's general counsel Steve Zipperstein said in January 2014.
Typo continued to accept orders even after the injunction. Now it's being forced to pay more than $860,000 for continuing to sell items, Recode's Ina Fried reports. Seacrest's Typo 2 product, which has a slightly altered keyboard, is not affected. The patent litigation is ongoing.
A Typo spokesperson sent us the following statement: " This is a ruling as part of the ongoing patent litigation related to the initial Typo product. It has no impact on the Typo 2 product currently in the marketplace or our other planned product releases for the tablet. We cannot comment any further."
Here's what the Typo looks like:
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