BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard patent has expired

BlackBerry’s iconic patent for keyboards on mobile devices expires today after being filed in 2005.

The company shot to success in the early 2000s with what are essentially the world’s first smartphones. They were packed with amazing tech, but BlackBerry owners loved nothing as much as their tiny keyboards. The brand is even known for not taking Apple seriously as a competitor because the iPhone didn’t launch with a keyboard.

If you were doing business or wanted to seem cool in 2011, you had a BlackBerry. There was just something effortlessly cool about them in the same way that Walkmans, GameBoys and iPods hold nostalgia today.

I’m not expecting a lot to change in the mobile phone market now that manufacturers can put keyboards on their devices without having to cut in BlackBerry. Touch screens are too popular and too widespread across mainstream devices.

If we’re lucky, we might see an uptick in low-end and experimental smartphones with keyboards, but brands like Unihertz have been releasing Blackberry knockoffs for a few years now without making a huge dent in the market, so as much as I want a wave of fun keyboard-enabled devices to flood the market in 2026, I don’t expect it.

That said, as a Canadian, it’s always fun to look back at Blackberry’s history and remember a time when a home-grown gadget was the star of the tech world. The company started in 1999 and still runs today, but its mobile phone division shuttered in 2016.

MobileSyrup started in 2007 and reviewed many of the company’s early devices until the Key2 LE hit the market in 2018. If you want to walk down memory lane, check out some of our review coverage on the older phones and let us know your favourite BlackBerry.

Source: Canadian Patent Database