Blackberry’s Rim Sues Kik For Patent Infringement

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Apparently, RIM may have had good reason to kick Kik off its devices after only two weeks in its App store. Kik Messenger is a program that enables instant messaging conversations to be sent across three major smart phone platforms: BlackBerry, iPhone and Android devices.

However, it seems Kik’s founder, Ted Livingston, was employed by BlackBerry’s developer RIM on different occasions, during which he allegedly educated himself on how to integrate his product on the BlackBerry interface. As such, RIM is alleging both deception and infringement on Kik’s part, in addition to claiming that it unfairly benefited from Livingston’s relations with RIM.

While on the surface it may seem like just another instance where a company with a large market share (such as RIM) is attempting to squash legitimate competition, RIM may have serious grounds for litigation. In terms of its claim of unfair advantage, the fact does remain that in only a month, Kik was able to gain over two million users; that’s extremely successful by any standards. And ...
... there are the allegations of deception against Livingston, whose actions, after all, do seem fishy.

In fact, Livingston worked on BlackBerry Messenger as a RIM employee, and then moved on to work with BlackBerry Alliance after he left. His work with the Alliance was to develop a music sharing application that could be integrated with BlackBerry’s infrastructure, but that wasn’t what he actually produced. Instead of a music sharing application, he was developing and released an instant messaging applicationâ€that was appropriately integrated with RIM’s BBM technology.

Livingston claims he did no wrong and did not in fact infringe on RIM’s patents in any way. He further claims that Kik Messenger is not even specifically designed to work with BlackBerry, but that it works across a variety of smart phone platforms, saying that this is why the company has been so successful in only a month. Kik further feels that they were banned from Rim’s App store only because they took business away from BlackBerry Messenger.

However, RIM has countered that Kik Messenger not only utilized confidential information gained through the Alliance program, but that whenever the app was downloaded by users, it collected personal information about them without their consent, allowing Kik to market itself even more effectively. Thus it unfairly benefited from assessing user’s information and from inside knowledge about RIM’s BlackBerry infrastructure.

It is tempting to immediately side with RIM given Livingston’s employment history, but in the patent and copyright infringement online wars, it is better to wait and see. Just recently, new allegations about Google’s abuse of its power to squash competition have yet again made waves in the information technology world. This time, the investigation is being taken up by the EU Commission. Could RIM be guilty of doing the same with Kik Messenger?

In the fight to control and disseminate information for profit, it seems that the rule of law in the virtual world is the same as in the brick and mortar world: the big guys get to control the tone of the conversation and to use the power garnered from their market share to beat the little guys who might topple them into submission. It will be interesting to see what additional details come to light as this suit unfolds, and what real culpability is in the end assigned to Kik Messenger.