BlackBerry claims Ryan Seacrest's Typo 2 keyboard infringes patents and trade dress in another lawsuit
Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is round two, filed barely two weeks after a court ordered the Seacrest-backed accessory maker to pay BlackBerry $860,000 over the original Typo keyboard — BlackBerry is arguing the redesigned Typo 2 repeats the same patent and trade-dress violations rather than fixing them. For Typo, the redesign that was supposed to clear the legal problem is now itself the accused product.
The suit also marks the start of a longer arc: with handset sales shrinking, BlackBerry began treating its keyboard and messaging intellectual property as a revenue line, escalating from this keyboard fight to suing Facebook over messaging patents in 2018 and Twitter in 2019. The endgame for the Typo matter came months later, when the company agreed to a settlement barring it from selling keyboards for screens under 7.9 inches ending its smartphone-keyboard business outright.
First-order effects
- Typo faces a potential injunction on the Typo 2 alongside more damages exposure, putting the Seacrest-funded startup's only product line at immediate legal risk.
- BlackBerry gains a fresh enforcement precedent on both its keyboard patents and its trade dress, strengthening the hand it used in the earlier $860,000 award.
Second-order effects
- Rivals making snap-on iPhone keyboards now have to design around BlackBerry's claimed look-and-feel rights, not just its utility patents, since trade dress claims reach any similar physical keyboard.
- Each win lowers the cost of BlackBerry's next enforcement move — the same playbook soon scaled up against much larger targets in Facebook, Snap, and Twitter.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, a declining hardware vendor can convert legacy patents into a durable licensing-and-litigation business — exactly the trajectory BlackBerry followed through the 2018-2019 messaging-patent suits, including Facebook's countersuit.
- Celebrity-backed hardware startups face structural exposure: fame funds the launch but doesn't shield the product from an incumbent's IP portfolio, pushing such ventures toward licensed designs or niche form factors like tablets above 7.9 inches.
The trend: BlackBerry's pivot from selling phones to enforcing its patent portfolio began with keyboard cases like Typo and scaled into high-stakes messaging-patent litigation against social-media giants.