RIM in trouble over “BBX” name

A few days ago Blackberry proudly announced their new and upcoming operating system – BBX. It is said to combine the best of Blackberry OS and QNX (which can be found on the Blackberry Playbook), and less than a week into its announcement it looks like RIM is in trouble regarding the BBX, which apparently infringes upon an already existing trademark held by Basis International.

“BASIS Chairman and CEO, Nico Spence, said, “We have 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. We are fielding numerous customer inquiries voicing their confusion about the RIM announcement.”

RIM replied with a statement of their own:

“RIM has not yet received a copy of the legal complaint described in Basis International’s press release, but we do not believe the marks are confusing, particularly since our respective companies are in different lines of business.”

We’re not sure what the outcome will be here, but if RIM were to follow in Apple’s footsteps regarding the issue of the “iPhone” name with Cisco, there’s a good chance they will just settle and probably come to some sort of agreement.