MobileIron has filed a lawsuit in California claiming BlackBerry has made “spurious and baseless” allegations of patent infringement against MobileIron, amounting to a version of civil extortion under California law.
MobileIron, which makes endpoint management and enterprise security products and services for mobile devices, claims that BlackBerry sent a letter demanding that MobileIron license certain patents and that BlackBerry has actually infringed on MobileIron’s own patents in four cases.
The suit says that in moving its focus from mobile phones to cybersecurity, BlackBerry has extracted “extortionate license fees as it tries to rebuild its company on the backs of other companies’ technologies.”
“The BlackBerry defendants have at all times known that their demands for money from MobileIron for alleged infringement of numerous patents are both objectively and subjectively baseless, but defendants have continued their acts of attempted extortion unabated,”
“Due to BlackBerry’s shrinking presence in the marketplace, it decided to shake companies down by making countless meritless patent assertions to generate licensing revenue instead of competing in the marketplace,”
The Monday complaint said that in moving its focus from cellphones to cybersecurity, BlackBerry has extracted “extortionate license fees as it tries to rebuild its company on the backs of other companies’ technologies.”
MobileIron says BlackBerry demands that companies license patents it knows are “statutorily surrendered” and asserts “infringement theories through unlawful notice letters that would not pass muster in any court of law.”
