ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BASIS International Ltd. has filed a complaint in New Mexico Federal Court against Research in Motion (RIM) for trademark infringement in response to RIM's announcement of their yet-to-be-released operating system (OS) named BBX for their BlackBerry smartphones and tablet computing devices. BASIS owns the BBX trademark and has been careful to protect it.
According to BASIS Chairman and CEO Nico Spence, “While we’ve been reasonable when others have attempted to use the name, RIM’s use is a clear conflict, especially given the recent addition of the Browser User Interface (BUI) capability to our BBX product. Anyone can try it on their browser, even a BlackBerry or PlayBook, at links.basis.com/buidemos. RIM’s public stance on the trademark infringement forced us to move forward with the legal procedure to eliminate continuing confusing communication from RIM, including removing all references to BBX on printed or electronic medium, including youtube.com.”
In an industry familiar with company and product startups, shutdowns, and end-of-life’s, BASIS’ “big little software company” approach and more than a quarter century-long commitment to delivering platform independence are the exception to the norm. A prime example of such a looming end-of-life is the planned end-of-support from Microsoft of the Visual FoxPro (VFP) language in 2015, with no major release since VFP9 in 2004. VFP was the last significant xBase programming language, offering similarities to BASIS’ object-oriented language. Beginning today, BASIS appears at a regional conference for VFP developers, Southwest Fox 2011, to introduce their technology as a replacement solution to the community with a greater guarantee of continuity and cross-platform capability than ever before.
Spence illustrates the confusion for current and future BASIS developers with a simple analogy. “RIM seems to be contending that choosing to name an OS with the same name as a programming language presents no conflict to the programming language. So, following this logic, imagine the following fictional scenario: a cross-platform programming language called 'Windows' that runs on Linux, the Apple Mac OS X, and Microsoft OS/2. Then imagine that Microsoft releases a new version of their OS and names it 'Windows.' Would future developers for the Apple OS X Mac or Linux platforms ever consider the 'Windows' programming language for their next development task? I think not.”
About BASIS
BASIS International Ltd. is a global software company, big and stable enough to be a reliable partner with thousands of companies, yet small and flexible enough to deliver customized solutions to meet today's business challenges. BASIS holds ownership positions in Descore, the Canadian distributor, BASIS Europe, AddonSoftware, and Audev, an European automotive dealership software developer.
BASIS' software developer community is a worldwide network of partners for whom the BASIS “BBx Generations” of products form the foundation for proven and reliable software solutions. Since 1985, BASIS’ mission has been to blaze a trail by producing ambitious and innovative programming languages, database products, development tools, and an application framework for their community to build upon. BASIS is committed to delivering platform independence to the server and client, including browser-based mobile clients.
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