US court temporarily blocks RIM using “BBX” name for OS

Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, has been temporarily blocked by a court in New Mexico from using the name "BBX" for its new operating system, creating uncertainty on the next year planned launch of the Canadian company's next-generation smart phone.

US District Judge William Johnson in Albuquerque, New Mexico, yesterday temporarily blocked RIM's use of the BBX trademark based on the suit filed by Basis International Ltd, which claims to have held the rights to the ''BBX'' trademark for the past 26 years.

Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Basis International, which has developed the BBX and BBJ business software, sought a temporary injunction with the aim of banning RIM from using the BBX name at its Asia DevCon conference in Singapore this week.

The court granted that request yesterday, prompting RIM to change the name to ''BlackBerry 10''.

Basis International said in its plea that it had "thousands of product licenses installed worldwide with the 'BBX' prefix that run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and other proprietary UNIX OSs from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and SUN, with mobile clients running Apple iOS, Google Android, and Windows Mobile."

"The BBX mark is identical to the mark which RIM is allegedly using to present its BBX product," the court said in its decision. "Despite the fact that the two companies are not direct competitors, the parties' respective products are highly related and target the same class of consumers, that is, business application software developers."