BlackBerry wins court order against TV host Ryan Seacrest's Typo

[March 29, 2014]  (Reuters) — BlackBerry Ltd won a preliminary injunction on Friday to ban Ryan Seacrest's Typo Products LLC from selling a $99 iPhone case after a judge agreed that television host's company had likely infringed on BlackBerry's patents.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said that the Canadian mobile phone maker had established a "likelihood" of proving that Typo infringed its patents, while mentioning that Typo had not sufficiently challenged the patents in question.

The preliminary injunction prohibits Typo from the sale of its keyboard, which is a part of the relief sought by Blackberry.

"BlackBerry is pleased that its motion for a preliminary injunction against Typo Products LLC was granted. This ruling will help prevent further injury to BlackBerry from Typo's blatant theft of our patented keyboard technology," a spokeswoman for BlackBerry said in an email.

Typo was not immediately available for comment outside of regular business hours.

In January, BlackBerry had filed a lawsuit against a company co-founded by "American Idol" host Seacrest that offers a physical keyboard that can be attached to some of Apple Inc's touch screen iPhone 5 models.

Typo had later said that it believed that the lawsuit filed by Blackberry lacked merit.

The BlackBerry complaint is case no. 14-cv-00023-WHO in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

(Reporting by Narottam Medhora and Euan Rocha; editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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