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Last week at BlackBerry DevCon, RIM unveiled the new name for its next-generation operating system, BBX. The very next day, it faced a potential lawsuit over the name from Basis, International — which has its own, trademarked operating system called "BBx." Basis has sent a cease and desist letter to RIM asking the BlackBerry maker to stop using the name. In a press release, Basis CEO Nico Spence called attention to the fact that its BBx OS works on multiple platforms and is therefore concerned about customer confusion:
We have thousands of product licenses installed worldwide with the ‘BBX’ prefix that run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and other proprietary UNIX OSs from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and SUN, with mobile clients running Apple iOS, Google Android, and Windows Mobile. We are fielding numerous customer inquiries voicing their confusion about the RIM announcement.
In the same press release, Spence may have extended an olive branch to RIM, noting that apps built for its BBx could potentially also work on BlackBerrys. RIM has expressed its intention to continue to use the BBX name, "We do not believe the marks are confusing."
Beyond being built off of RIM's PlayBook 2.0 OS, very little is known about the features and functionality of BBX. Despite unveiling the name last week, RIM said precious little about the actual BBX OS at BlackBerry DevCon. RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie had claimed that it will "leapfrog" the competition, but it's not clear exactly what that entails yet.
