You’ve probably heard by now that BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is suing Samsung, maker of the BlackJack, the hot new smartphone from Cingular, over the name BlackJack claiming that it infringes on it’s trademark name of BlackBerry.

Samsung had to know this was coming didn’t they? I can’t believe that a big company like Samsung doesn’t have at least one patent / trademark attorney on retainer.

If, however, Samsung truly didn’t mean to infringe on RIM’s trademark, why is the BlackJack only called the BlackJack in the country where the brand BlackBerry is the strongest.


The Samsung BlackJack is called the Samsung SGH-i320 in the UK. Is it just a coincidence that the Samsung named their device so close to BlackBerry in the U.S. that even distributors get confused in a country where the whole patent / trademark system is lax to say the least and any type of dispute between corporations with the money to duke it out could take years in the legal system?

The UK, on the other hand, has a pretty good system for handling patents and trademarks. Chances are that the name BlackJack would’ve never been issued in the UK in the first place.

Can anyone make me believe that Samsung didn’t know good and well that the the benefit that they gain from naming their hot new smartphone so close to the most popular PDA in the world wouldn’t far outweigh what the eventually settle with RIM for 2 to 4 years from now.

Cingular BlackJack, Samsung SHG-i320