Settlement reached between BlackBerry and Ryan Seacrest

BlackBerry Passport mobile technology

The struggling Canadian smartphone maker has agreed to settle its lawsuits with the Typo company.

BlackBerry Ltd. has brought a lengthy legal battle with Typo Products LLC – a company financed and co-founded by Ryan Seacrest of “American Idol” fame – by coming to a settlement with the startup.

All of the “outstanding legal disputes” between the two companies have been wrapped up by a settlement.

According to BlackBerry, all of its lawsuits against Typo Products LLC have now been settled as have all of those that were filed against related companies when it comes to its allegations that Typo had infringed on its patents by copying the mini-keyboard that is synonymous with the classic BlackBerry device appearance, when Typo made a similar accessory for iPhones from Apple.

In the BlackBerry settlement, Typo has agreed that it will no longer sell the smartphone keyboards.

BlackBerry Passport mobile technologyThese keyboards cannot be sold anywhere in the world for mobile devices that are smaller than a 7.9 inch display size. The Canadian company did not reveal some of the other terms of the settlement, which both companies have agreed to keep confidential.

The lawsuit dates back to 2014, but that was brought back into the spotlight by the smartphone maker when it told an American federal court in California that Typo had released a product called the Typo2, which the second generation of the company’s keyboards and that was released in December, was yet again acting as a copy of the “iconic” keyboard on the BlackBerry smartphones.

In February, the court decided that Typo should be required to pay $860,600 in sanctions to the handset maker for the violation of the previous injunction that had been put into place. The Typo2 was selling for $70 to $99 and was designed to snap onto an iPhone in order to allow the device to have a physical keyboard instead of the touchscreen keyboard that actually came with the device.

The complaint had stated that “Just as they did with the Typo Keyboard, Defendants have again copied numerous proprietary BlackBerry designs and patents in the Typo2 Keyboard.”

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