Eatoni Ergonomics Brings Lawsuit against RIM

9:05 pm on September 17, 2005 | Category: Business, Mobile Devices, Law

Eatoni Ergonomics a developer of mobile text input technology has initiated a lawsuit against Research in Motion (RIM) this week, claiming that the BlackBerry 7100 line of products is infringing on one of its patents.

According to representatives from Etoni, that company owns a fundamental patent on small keyboards that are designed to look and act like full-sized keyboards. The company has now requested a court injunction preventing the manufacture and sale of BlackBerry 7100 devices.

“The problem is that the RIM 7100 is good, good enough to infringe the patent, but not good enough to create a new standard for mobile text entry,” said Eatoni CEO, Howard Gutowitz in a statement earlier in the week. “That’s why we have to stop it now, and hopefully convince RIM and others to introduce new devices which implement the technology properly.”

The patent that this dispute centers around was granted to Eatoni by the US Patent office, and is entitled “Touch-Typable Devices Based on Ambiguous Codes and Methods to Design Such Devices.” The company’s complaints also name T-Mobile USA, due to the fact that they sell the offending BlackBerry devices.

This is just another stage in a long legal battle between RIM and Eatoni. RIM made headlines in April when they asked for a declaratory judgement against Eatoni, after receiving what it claimed were treats from Eatoni that they would sue. So even if the lawsuit is ungrounded, Eatoni can now at least say that they’ve been true to their word.

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