Kikked in the Face with a Lawsuit, RIM Takes No Prisoners
The Canada-based RIM sued Kik yesterday for allegedly infringing patents related to BBM. No exact details were disclosed, but the lawsuit does include accusations blaming Kik chief and former RIM employee Ted Livingston of unlawfully using information he obtained from the mobile maker in order to copy BlackBerry Messenger aspects.
“Kik was once the highlight of BlackBerry DevCon but suddenly fell out of favor in the past month, when RIM first pulled the app from BlackBerry App World and later disabled push support, rendering the app mostly useless even for those who already had copies. The Canadian phone company claimed that Kik had “breached contractual obligations” but has refused to say what those were.”
BBM and Kik are “real-time texting” competitors. With Kik being an independent cross-platform app supporting chat on BBOS, Android and iOS, unlike BBM. RIM may be worried it has the potential to drive away a significant portion of its audience remaining only because of their non-exportable Blackberry social contacts.
This situation began last week, with the unexpected ban of Kik downloads, and its denial of access to the BlackBerry Software Development Kit and Signing Keys. This ban directly affected 1 million of the total 2.5 million Kik users. This is behavior we find typical of Apple, not RIM, but it’s certainly interesting to see how various platforms will be managing their app economies and markets.
In other copyright and patent infringement news from the tech industry, we covered here how some corporations are intensifying the patent warfare, taking their competition to court.
A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:
Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.
- 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
- 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.
Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.
