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Comment by breitling | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't BlackBerry have a patent for this?

Ryan Seacrest had started a iPhone physical keyboard company, Typo I think, and got sued so bad he abandoned the whole thing. How will these people get around it?

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Doubt they have a patent for "keyboard on phones" (I had a nokia with a physical keyboard). Was probably because it was very similar to blackberrys keyboard (really looks like they just stuck a blackberry keyboard on an iphone) while this one seems more different.

The Blackberry lawsuit against Typo seemed to be heavily design related, see the comparisons between Typo and Blackberry devices on page 14 and 15 of https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/02/18/blackberry_complaint_typo....

I wonder if that is in part why Clicks has more colorful designs.

I'd guess those patents would have expired by now. They only last 20 years, and you must file them within 12 months of a product coming to market including that invention or you forfeit the right to patent it. So any patents related to the 7000 line or earlier would have expired, and I don't see anything about this keyboard that is similar to later BB keyboards.

Apparently so: https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8696991/blackberry-typo-ke...

Our patent system is so absurd. How can BlackBerry own the concept of using a keyboard with a touchscreen?

Two patents were at play: D685,775, and 7,629,964. (http://ia600308.us.archive.org/35/items/gov.uscourts.cand.27...)

D685,775 expires in 2027. Whether it's relevant, only a lawyer can say. (https://patents.google.com/patent/USD685775S1/en)

7,629,964 expired in 2018. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7629964B2/en)

Some articles about the lawsuit list a third patent. It is a (real) invention patent, not a design patent, for the shape of the keys:

8,162,552 which expires in 2031. <https://patents.google.com/patent/US8162552B2/en>

typo pretty blatantly ripped off the unique shape of the blackberry keys that makes them easier to hit than normal mini keyboards. i'm not a fan of the patent system, but that seems like an actual novel thing that blackberry legitimately invented.

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