Plaintiff
12 cases as plaintiff.
BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) is a Canadian software company headquartered at 2200 University Avenue East, Waterloo, Ontario. It was founded in 1984 as Research in Motion by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin and rebranded BlackBerry in 2013. It is publicly listed on the NYSE and TSX and has no parent company. Headcount is in the low thousands (public profiles place it in the 1,000–5,000 band); revenue was $534.9M in FY2025 (ended Feb. 28, 2025) and roughly $549M in FY2026, per company filings.
Operations run through three divisions. QNX supplies real-time operating systems, hypervisors and ISO 26262 functional-safety software to automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, plus BlackBerry Radar telematics, Certicom cryptography and BlackBerry IVY. Secure Communications sells enterprise and government mobility/resilience products — BlackBerry UEM, SecuSUITE (via Secusmart) and AtHoc critical-event management. Licensing monetizes the retained patent portfolio (roughly $22–24M annually). The legacy handset business was exited, and the Cylance endpoint-security business was sold to Arctic Wolf in February 2025.
Litigation posture: an active two-way litigant — 12 tracked cases as plaintiff and 12 as defendant. As plaintiff it sued Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram, Snap and Twitter in the Central District of California (2018–2019) and Avaya in the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division (2016), asserting messaging, user-interface and mapping patents. Notably, every tracked defendant-side appearance is a USPTO PTAB proceeding — inter partes reviews filed by Facebook and Snap against BlackBerry patents — not a district court infringement suit, so the company is not absorbing a wave of NPE-style complaints. Its suits were filed in California, not the Eastern District of Texas.
Context: the Facebook/WhatsApp dispute settled confidentially in early 2021; the Snap matter went against BlackBerry at the Federal Circuit in December 2020, which affirmed invalidity of four patents under Alice. In January 2022 BlackBerry agreed to sell substantially all non-core patents — mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking — to Catapult IP Innovations, a Delaware special-purpose vehicle, for $600M with a license-back; the transaction was long delayed and BlackBerry said it was exploring alternatives.
BlackBerry asserted U.S. Patent No. 8,296,351, among five patents, against Twitter. After Twitter moved to dismiss on collateral estoppel grounds, the court granted a joint stipulation to vacate the prior invalidation order and dismiss all claims and counterclaims with prejudice on January 2, 2020.
BlackBerry asserted seven patents against Twitter, including the '929 and '351 patents. On Oct. 1, 2019, the court granted Twitter's § 101 motion to dismiss as to the '351 and '929 patents. On Jan. 2, 2020, the court vacated that invalidation order and dismissed all claims and counterclaims with prejudice pursuant to settlement.
BlackBerry asserted the '929 patent, along with the '713, '351, and '634 patents, against Snap. The Oct. 1, 2019 summary-judgment ruling invalidating the '929 applied to this case, and final judgment was entered Nov. 19, 2019.
BlackBerry asserted 7,372,961 among seven patents against Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. A Rule 54(b) final judgment entered for defendants as to U.S. 8,296,351 and 8,676,929 under § 101; remaining claims, including any '961 count, were later dismissed with prejudice by stipulation on 2021-02-16.
BlackBerry asserted the '236 patent only against WhatsApp, Inc. (claims 15 and 17). On July 23, 2020, the court granted Defendants' motion for summary judgment holding the asserted '236 claims invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The parties settled confidentially and the case terminated on Feb. 16, 2021.
BlackBerry asserted the '713 patent as one of nine patents-in-suit against Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram in the Central District of California. The court addressed § 101 eligibility, dismissing the independent claims of the '713 patent with prejudice while denying dismissal as to dependent claims. The case was terminated/closed on February 16, 2021; the precise termination mechanism is unverified.
BlackBerry asserted 7,372,961 among eight patents against Avaya, accusing Avaya products including OpenSSL and Open SSL elliptic curve cryptography. Venue-transfer motion denied 2017-10-10; final disposition not verified.
BlackBerry asserted the '351 and '929 patents against Snap Inc. in a case consolidated with the Facebook action. The court found the '351 claims invalid under § 101, and final judgment was entered November 15, 2019.
BlackBerry Limited sued Snap Inc. in the Central District of California, asserting several BlackBerry patents, including the action-spot patents U.S. 8,825,084 and U.S. 8,326,327 against Snap. The court granted Snap's motion for summary judgment of invalidity under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as to U.S. Patent Nos. 8,825,084 and 8,326,327 in 2019.
Related action by BlackBerry against Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, consolidated for pretrial purposes with BlackBerry v. Snap. The narrative lists Federal Circuit appeal 2020-1256 as arising from this consolidated action. The narrative does not fully identify the patents asserted in this case.
BlackBerry sued Facebook and affiliated entities for patent infringement; U.S. 9,349,120 was among the asserted patents. The court found the '120 claims not drawn to an abstract idea, but final disposition as to the '120 Patent was not confirmed.
BlackBerry asserted the '713 patent as Count III against Snap, one of six patents asserted. The court granted Snap's § 101 motion to dismiss the independent claims of the '713 patent with prejudice, and final judgment in November 2019 dismissed BlackBerry's '713 and '634 claims and Snap's related counterclaims with prejudice. BlackBerry agreed not to pursue claims that Snap infringes the '634 or '713 patents.