BlackBerry Ltd said on Friday it had filed a lawsuit against a company co-founded by "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest that offers a physical keyboard that can be attached to some of Apple Inc's touchscreen iPhone 5 models.
The company, Typo Products LLC, is currently taking pre-orders for the $99 keyboard, which features angled miniature keys similar to those used on many of BlackBerry's devices.
Canada's BlackBerry, a once dominant smartphone maker that has lost market share to the iPhone and other touchscreen devices, said Typo's keyboard infringes its own design.
The allegation has not been proven in court. Typo and Seacrest could not immediately be reached to comment on the legal proceedings.
"We are flattered by the desire to graft our keyboard onto other smartphones, but we will not tolerate such activity without fair compensation for using our intellectual property and our technological innovations," Steve Zipperstein, BlackBerry's chief legal officer, said in a statement.
A 26-year-old Beijing woman's breast implant exploded after she spent four continuous hours lying on her stomach and playing video games on her cell phone.
The unidentified woman rushed to a hospital in Beijing after she suffered pain in her chest. On reaching the hospital she found that her breast implants had exploded due to lying on her chest for four contiguous hours while playing Dragon Summon on her iphone.
On proper examination, the doctors declared that the low quality of implant, combined with the prolonged pressure of lying on the stomach for an extended period of time led to the rupture of the breast implants.
The woman had undergone a breast augmentation surgery five years ago to boost her low self esteem. The doctors responded quickly and took out the ruptured implants before her condition got worse.
Research In Motion BBM application is to launch on iPhone and Android phones.
The popular instant messaging service will be available as a free app for iOS and Android devices in the coming months.
It will work on Apple devices running iOS 6 or later and Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and Jelly Bean (4.1).
The app will initially offer texts, photo messages and group sharing functions, with screen sharing and voice and video calls being rolled out later in the year.
The move puts BlackBerry in direct competition with other cross-platform messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Interestingly, BlackBerry has not yet announced any plan to bring the app to Windows Phone or Symbian phones even though some other popular IM apps like WhatsApp support these platforms.
"It's time to bring BBM to a greater audience no matter what mobile device they carry," said BB CEO Thorsten Heins.
