BlackBerry Sues Twitter For Patent Infringement

BlackBerry has set its sights on Twitter in a new patent infringement lawsuit, accusing the social media company of illegally using technology in its mobile messaging apps that had been developed by the former smartphone maker. Reuters reports: The lawsuit said Twitter wrongly sought to compensate for being a 'relative latecomer' to mobile messaging by co-opting Blackberry's inventions for such services as the main Twitter application and Twitter Ads, infringing six of the company's patents. Twitter 'succeeded in diverting consumers away from BlackBerry's products and services' and toward its own by misappropriating features that made BlackBerry 'a critical and commercial success in the first place,' the complaint said.

The lawsuit resembles patent infringement cases that BlackBerry filed there last March and April against Facebook and Snap. Last August, U.S. District Judge George Wu allowed BlackBerry to pursue most of its infringement claims in those lawsuits, which according to court records remain pending. Wu may be assigned the case against San Francisco-based Twitter because federal courts often assign cases deemed 'related' to a single judge. The Facebook and Snap lawsuits were deemed related.

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