BlackBerry hasn’t sold a phone in years. The company that once defined mobile communication for Wall Street traders, Washington politicians, and anyone who craved a physical keyboard has faded so thoroughly from consumer consciousness that its name now evokes nostalgia rather than relevance. But in federal courtrooms across the United States, BlackBerry’s intellectual property portfolio is experiencing a second life — one that has almost nothing to do with BlackBerry itself and everything to do with the lucrative business of patent litigation.
Apple is the target. Again.
As AppleInsider reported, a fresh wave of patent infringement lawsuits has landed on Apple’s doorstep, and the patents at the center of these claims trace their lineage back to BlackBerry — or more precisely, to the sprawling portfolio that BlackBerry accumulated during its years as a smartphone pioneer. The suits don’t come from BlackBerry directly. They come from entities that acquired portions of BlackBerry’s patent holdings and are now asserting those rights against the biggest technology companies in the world. Apple, with its enormous iPhone revenue and deep pockets, is the most conspicuous defendant.
The mechanics are familiar to anyone who has followed patent litigation in the tech sector over the past two decades. A company develops foundational technology. That company declines or pivots. Its patents — sometimes numbering in the thousands — get sold, licensed, or transferred to holding companies, investment funds, or specialized licensing firms. Those new owners then pursue infringement claims against companies whose products arguably practice the patented inventions. Critics call these entities patent trolls. The entities themselves prefer terms like patent licensing companies or intellectual property monetization firms.
Whatever the label, the result is the same: Apple finds itself defending against patents it didn’t create, held by companies it has no commercial relationship with, in disputes that can drag on for years and cost tens of millions of dollars in legal fees alone — before any damages are even considered.
The specific patents at issue in the latest round of litigation cover technologies related to wireless communication, messaging protocols, and mobile device security. These are areas where BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion, was genuinely innovative. The company’s push email system was groundbreaking when it launched. Its approach to secure mobile communications attracted government agencies and Fortune 500 companies alike. And many of the patents BlackBerry filed during its peak years — roughly 2003 to 2012 — describe techniques and architectures that became standard across the mobile industry.
That’s precisely the problem for Apple.
When patents cover technologies that became industry-standard, virtually every major smartphone maker is potentially infringing. Apple’s iPhone, Samsung’s Galaxy lineup, Google’s Pixel devices — they all rely on wireless standards and communication protocols that evolved during the same era BlackBerry was filing its most prolific patent applications. But Apple, as the world’s most valuable company and the maker of the most profitable smartphone on Earth, presents the most attractive litigation target by far.
BlackBerry’s patent portfolio didn’t end up in the hands of litigators by accident. The company began actively monetizing its intellectual property as its hardware business collapsed. In 2022, BlackBerry sold a portfolio of approximately 32,000 patents related to mobile devices, messaging, and wireless networking to a special-purpose vehicle called Catapult IP Innovations. That transaction, valued at around $600 million according to reports at the time, effectively transferred decades of BlackBerry innovation into the hands of an entity whose primary business model is patent licensing and enforcement.
Catapult and its affiliates have since launched multiple lawsuits against major tech companies. Apple is a repeat defendant. So are others. But the sheer volume of Apple’s product sales — iPhone generated over $200 billion in revenue in fiscal 2024 — makes it the crown jewel for any patent plaintiff seeking substantial damages.
Apple, for its part, has never been passive in patent disputes. The company has a long history of both asserting its own patents aggressively and fighting back hard against infringement claims. Apple’s legal team regularly challenges patent validity through inter partes review proceedings at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a process that allows defendants to argue that a patent should never have been granted in the first place. Apple has won many of these challenges. It has also lost some.
The broader pattern here extends well beyond BlackBerry’s portfolio. Apple currently faces patent litigation from dozens of entities at any given time. Some are competitors. Many are non-practicing entities — companies that hold patents but don’t manufacture products. The International Trade Commission, the Eastern District of Texas, the Western District of Texas, and the District of Delaware are all popular venues for these cases, each with procedural characteristics that plaintiffs find advantageous.
But the BlackBerry-derived suits carry a particular irony. BlackBerry and Apple were once direct rivals. The launch of the iPhone in 2007 is widely credited with beginning BlackBerry’s decline. Steve Jobs stood on stage and rendered the physical keyboard obsolete in a single afternoon. Within a few years, BlackBerry’s market share had evaporated. The company that had pioneered mobile email and secure enterprise communication watched helplessly as Apple and Google redefined what a smartphone could be.
Now, in a twist that would make for excellent courtroom drama, BlackBerry’s inventions are being wielded against the very company that destroyed BlackBerry’s business. The patents survived even as the products didn’t.
This dynamic raises questions that the tech industry has been debating for years without resolution. Should patents outlive the companies that created them? Should entities that acquire patents purely for licensing and litigation purposes receive the same legal protections as the original inventors? And does the current patent system actually promote innovation, or does it primarily generate friction and cost for companies trying to build products?
Proponents of strong patent rights argue that inventors deserve compensation regardless of what happens to their companies. If BlackBerry developed genuine innovations, the argument goes, then companies using those innovations should pay for them — even if they’re paying a successor entity rather than BlackBerry itself. Patents are property. Property can be bought and sold. The buyer inherits the seller’s rights.
Opponents counter that the system has become detached from its original purpose. The Constitution grants Congress the power to issue patents “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” When patents are wielded by entities that produce nothing, against companies that independently developed similar technology, the promotional purpose is arguably lost. What remains is a tax on innovation — a cost of doing business that gets passed along to consumers.
Apple has been vocal about this tension, though typically through industry groups and lobbying efforts rather than direct public statements. The company has supported patent reform legislation in Congress and has been a leading user of the inter partes review system established by the America Invents Act of 2011. That system was designed specifically to provide a faster, cheaper alternative to full-blown litigation for challenging questionable patents.
And yet the suits keep coming. The economics are simply too attractive for patent holders to ignore. A single successful infringement verdict against Apple can yield hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2020, a jury ordered Apple to pay $506 million to PanOptis for infringing patents related to 4G LTE technology. In 2023, Apple agreed to pay Qualcomm billions to settle a long-running patent dispute. The numbers are staggering, and they create powerful incentives for patent owners — original or acquired — to file suit.
The BlackBerry-derived cases currently pending against Apple are in relatively early stages, according to AppleInsider’s reporting. Discovery, claim construction, and trial are likely months or years away. Apple will almost certainly challenge the validity of the asserted patents. The plaintiffs will almost certainly argue that Apple’s products practice every element of their claims. Expert witnesses will be retained. Motions will be filed. The legal meter will run.
For Apple’s shareholders, patent litigation is a known cost of doing business — one that barely registers against the company’s $3 trillion market capitalization. But for the broader technology industry, the persistence of these disputes reflects a system that remains fundamentally unresolved. Congress has not passed major patent reform legislation since 2011. The Supreme Court has issued several important decisions narrowing patent eligibility and limiting damages, but the basic structure of the system remains intact.
So BlackBerry’s ghost haunts Apple. Not through competition. Not through better products. Through the quiet, persistent power of intellectual property law — a power that survives corporate decline, product obsolescence, and even the company itself. The phones are gone. The patents endure. And somewhere in a federal courthouse, lawyers are arguing about inventions that were conceived on a BlackBerry but will be judged against an iPhone.
That’s the modern patent system in miniature. Messy, expensive, and showing no signs of going away.
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