Facebook has initiated legal proceeding against BlackBerry on charges of patent infringement. As per the complaint filed in the San Francisco federal court, the social media giant is accusing BlackBerry of infringing at least six of the former’s patents, which includes the voice messaging technology as well.
Among the other aspects that Facebook is seeking to draw the court’s attention to include the means of delivering graphics, audio, and video by a mobile or technologies related to tracking or analyzing of GPS info. Facebook is also seeking an unspecified amount in damages from the Canadian company.
Facebook’s act to seek legal redressal against BlackBerry, however, can’t be seen as an isolated development. Rather, it can well be considered to be an escalation of the dispute both companies are already in at the moment what with BlackBerry too having sued the social media company on similar grounds. Interestingly, both companies seem to have issues with messaging technologies with each side blaming the other of having infringed their respective patents.
According to BlackBerry, the social media company is suing several of the former’s ‘security, user interface, and functionality enhancing feature’ that had made the Canadian firm’s products and services so special. Elaborating further, BlackBerry said among the UI bits that Facebook has copied include the way message timestamps are displayed or the method of tagging friends and family in images.
Worth mentioning, BlackBerry Messenger used to be an extremely popular messaging app back during mid-2000. It also was revered for the secure environment it provided for, which made it particularly favored by the business community. Unfortunately, it began to drop out of favor by the turn of the decade so that by late-2000, BBM was already counting its last days.
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On the other hand, Facebook-owned messaging apps Messenger and WhatsApp have billion-plus users between them and are among the most used the world over. The social media firm meanwhile chided BlackBerry claiming that the Canadian company was trying to make up for the loses it incurred due to lack of innovation by trying ‘to tax the innovation of others’.
