RIM Wins Court Case Over BBM Trademark

Research In Motion Ltd. won a federal court ruling in Canada this week allowing it to keep the BBM trademark for its popular messenger service, the company said, a rare bit of good news for the BlackBerry maker.

Canadian television and radio research firm BBM Canada had filed a trademark infringement suit against RIM, arguing that it had been using the BBM name for 60 years and RIM's use of the acronym confused the public.

The court ruled late Wednesday that the two companies operate in different sectors of the economy and RIM could keep using the name.

"We are pleased that the Federal Court of Canada sided with RIM and confirmed that RIM's use of BBM does not infringe the trade-mark rights of BBM Canada as they had alleged," a RIM spokeswoman said in a statement.

RIM's BBM service is one of its most popular offerings and has more than 55 million users world-wide. The loss of the BBM name would have been a difficult blow in what has been a year full of them, as RIM struggles to keep pace with competitors Apple Inc. AAPL -0.25% and Google Inc. GOOG -1.25% in the smartphone market.

RIM has been caught up in trademark suits before. In an embarrassing episode last year it had to abandon the BBX name for its next line of phones after a company in New Mexico claimed that trademark successfully. RIM changed the name of its next line of phones, due out later this year, to BlackBerry 10.