The company had previously announced the OS, which merges features from their smartphone and tablet platforms, would be called BBX. Unfortunately for RIM, that name had been in use for many years by a company called BASIS International.
BASIS makes development tools for creating code to run on a variety of platforms, including several mobile operating systems. They said this had already caused confusion for their customers, several of which had asked them if there was an affiliation with the new BlackBerry OS.
The suit went further, alleging (via CRN):
In addition to the inevitable confusion created by RIM's use of the mark BBX for related goods, customers and prospective customers are also likely to wrongly believe that software applications created using Basis' development tools are only compatible with RIM's BBX operating system, thus impairing and destroying Basis' reputation for providing software development tools for cross-platform development
With court proceedings apparently going against RIM, they decided to give in and choose a new name.
Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 9 Dec 2011 4:13
