RIMM Sued Over SureType Auto-Completion Technique

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,122557,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp">http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,122557,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp</a><br /><br /><i>"A New York company has sued BlackBerry maker Research in Motion over the design of the keyboard on the BlackBerry 7100, claiming it holds a patent that covers the technology. Eatoni Ergonomics has filed a lawsuit against RIM in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the plaintiff company announced Wednesday. Eatoni holds a patent that it claims covers mobile keyboards with a "QWERTY" design that use predictive text technology. "QWERTY" is another term for a standard typewriter or keyboard layout, referring to the first six letters on the upper left hand side of a keyboard."</i><br /><br />I wonder if Eatoni is willing to go up against Microsoft? I think the difference with Microsoft's predictive text though is it has been around since at lease 2000 and with the new QWERTY devices, it just works well with the keyboards just as it always has with stylus input.

[Mike Temporale]

The 7100 has that goofy QWERTY keyboard where there are 2 letters are mapped to a single key and then the system will predict what word you are entering based on the keys pressed and the possible words that can be derived from those letters. (Kind of like T9, but with less letters per key and more keys.)

My guess, is that the patent is based around this reduced qwerty predicted combination. It's not something that Microsoft has done on either the Pocket PC or Smartphone.

&lt;Disclaimer> I have not read up on the Eatoni patent or this lawsuit. This is only a guess &lt;/Disclaimer>

[Gremmie]

RIM is protect on-high by the U.S. government. Senators, Representatives, and staff at the Capitol and White House use Blackberry's to communicate, especially while on the road. When RIM faced patent litigation in the past, there has been measured passed to help protect RIM to some extent.

[whydidnt]

Just another example of Patent abuse in my opinion. Can Eatoni name any actual product they built that uses this technology. Furthermore, since predictive text has been around for a long time, how is this not Prior Art?

Not that we should feel sorry for RIM, they've played this game themselves before. Gremmie, what measures were passed specifically to protect RIM? That sounds a lot like an Urban Legend/conspiracy theory to me.

[TheZodiac]

Do you SERIOUSLY need predictive text for a phone pad where the keyboard only has two letters per button?

I dont see how it speeds up anything. Ive tried it extensively, and it blows.

A custom dictionary would do just fine.

Predictive text sucks.

[Ed Hansberry]

For me, predictiva text is only really valuable when there is some form of auto completion. Spelling a word like "information" is made easier by T9 for example, but I've yet to see one that allows you to type "inform" andyoffer you choices like WM does. To me, this seems like a no brainer feature. sometimes it irritates me my desktop doesn't do it. :mrgreen: