RIM sues Samsung over "BlackJack" phone

Waterloo (ON) - Research in Motion is jumping on the lawsuit gravy train by suing Samsung over its naming of the BlackJack phone. RIM thinks the BlackJack name is too close to its line of Blackberry email-fetching saying in the lawsuit that the name is a "false designation of origin" and dilutes the Blackberry trademark.

Samsung launched the quad-band BlackJack in early December to much fanfare. The phone runs the Windows Mobile operating system and has a full QWERTY keyboard for text input, something the BlackBerry has had for years.

Of course tech savvy folks would never mistake a BlackJack for a Blackberry, but RIM is basically saying the name is too close for comfort and that some people could unknowingly buy a BlackJack, when they actually wanted a Blackberry.

RIM filed the lawsuit last week at the United States federal court in Los Angeles, California. Of course the company is no stranger to lawsuits and back in March it settled a nasty patent battle with NTP, a patent holding company, for $612.5 million dollars.

Interestingly enough, Cingular Wireless sells both the Samsung BlackJack and the RIM BlackBerry for its cellular network.