Eatoni Ergonomics, a Manhattan based developer of predictive-text technology, recently sued Research in Motion and seeks an injunction from the manufacture and sale of 7100 series BlackBerry devices in the United States because of what they claim to be patent infringement.
Eatoni owns a fundamental patent on reduced keyboards and related technology which look, feel, and act like a full QWERTY keyboard.
“The problem,” alleges Gutowitz, “is that the RIM 7100 is good, good enough to infringe the patent, but not good enough to create a new standard for mobile text entry. That’s why we have to stop it now, and hopefully convince RIM and others to introduce new devices which implement the technology properly.”