BlackBerry Ltd has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook Inc and its WhatsApp and Instagram apps, arguing that they copied technology and features from BlackBerry Messenger, Reuters has reported.
This is coming weeks after BlackBerry’s Chief Executive, John Chen, was accused of using litigation over patent infringement to make money for the company, which some analysts claimed lost market share in the smartphone market that it once dominated.
In a case filed at a Los Angeles (United States) federal court, BlackBerry said “Defendants created mobile messaging applications that co-opt BlackBerry’s innovations, using a number of the innovative security, user interface, and functionality enhancing features.
“Protecting shareholder assets and intellectual property is the job of every CEO,” BlackBerry spokeswoman Sarah McKinney said in an email. However, she noted that litigation was “not central to BlackBerry’s strategy.”
The lawsuit followed years of negotiation and BlackBerry has an obligation to shareholders to pursue appropriate legal remedies, she added.
Facebook Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal said in a statement that the company intended to fight the lawsuit.
“Blackberry’s suit sadly reflects the current state of its messaging business,” Grewal said. “Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, Blackberry is now looking to tax the innovation of others.”
For some time now, BlackBerry has been trying to persuade other companies to pay licensing royalties to use its trove of more than 40,000 global patents on technology including operating systems, networking infrastructure, acoustics, messaging, automotive subsystems, cybersecurity and wireless communications.
Similarly, the Canada-based firm is also selling cybersecurity software for self driving cars.
It will be recalled that BlackBerry sued Nokia Corp in February 2017, alleging infringement of patents relating to 3G and 4G wireless communications technology. That case is still pending in US federal court in Delaware.
Also, Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) last year agreed to pay BlackBerry $940 million to resolve arbitration over royalty payments.
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