take court orders seriously, kids —

BlackBerry wins a cool $860,000 from makers of Ryan Seacrest’s Typo keyboard

Typo's "not-so-clever" violations of an injunction earn it a heavy fine.

Typo was told not to sell the original keyboard case, but it did so anyway.
Enlarge / Typo was told not to sell the original keyboard case, but it did so anyway.

Back in January of 2014, BlackBerry sued the makers of the Typo, a hardware keyboard case for the iPhone. BlackBerry argued that the Typo violated its keyboard patents, and it's not hard to see why the court eventually came down on BlackBerry's side—the Typo is a clear imitation of the keyboard BlackBerry has been selling with its phones for years.

The US District Court of Northern California ordered Typo to halt sales, and the injunction went into effect on April 15, 2014. However, Typo didn't comply, and BlackBerry decided to pursue a contempt of court charge that the court has now upheld. Typo will pay BlackBerry an $860,000 fine plus other legal fees and costs.

According to the court filing (PDF, worth a read in its entirety), Typo sold a total of 18,737 Typo keyboards after the injunction went into effect, provided warranty service for 365 keyboards, and "referred six customers to third parties to buy the enjoined keyboard."

Typo CEO Laurence Hallier sold 1,908 of those keyboards through his friend and business associate Chris Yergensen—the keyboards were given to Yergensen before the injunction was in place, but Yergensen didn't actually pay Typo for the keyboards (and thus, Typo didn't "sell" them) until after the injunction date.

Another 16,829 of the keyboards were sold to retailers outside of the US, which Typo claims did not violate the injunction. However, the court agrees with BlackBerry's assertion that "Typo took deliberate steps, all within the United States, to offer to sell and sell the enjoined keyboards after the injunction took effect." Hallier negotiated the sales, prepared invoices, shipped, and received payment for the cases while in the US, and it doesn't matter that the keyboards made their way into consumers' hands once they were outside of the country.

BlackBerry was originally seeking $2.6 million in fines, which the court reduced to $860,000 primarily because "the extent to which BlackBerry has been damaged is uncertain." However:

Typo’s not so clever attempts to evade the Court’s preliminary injunction is quite certain, and it is my obligation and intent to vindicate respect for and compliance with the Court’s orders. The amount of sanctions awarded is only a third of what BlackBerry sought and is directly tied to additional revenue that Typo could have expected from its illegal conduct. Under the circumstances, it is a just and appropriate award.

Typo has since released the Typo 2, a new design that's apparently just different enough not to violate anyone's intellectual property.

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