Although BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has had its troubles recently, troubles that they hope to overcome eventually when they launch their BlackBerry 10 devices, RIM hasn’t been standing still, and has apparently been granted a patent for a BlackBerry 10 keyboard.
An article over on Crackberry, by way of Engadget, who has it that the USPTO has issued a somewhat broad patent for logic-based text prediction, which I sure you all know basically means text entry that thinks ahead and tries to guess what the user is attempting to type.
Apparently the only time this BlackBerry 10 keyboard wont try to predict text entry is when the user types a password, which is a good thing obviously.
The official jargon of the patent can get quite technical, so I wont attempt to explain it, so here’s an excerpt for those that enjoy that kind of thing…
“A handheld electronic device includes a reduced QWERTY keyboard and is enabled with disambiguation software. The device provides output in the form of a default output and a number of variants. The output is based largely upon the frequency, i.e., the likelihood that a user intended a particular output, but various features of the device provide additional variants that are not based solely on frequency and rather are provided by various logic structures resident on the device.
The device enables editing during text entry and also provides a learning function that allows the disambiguation function to adapt to provide a customized experience for the user. The disambiguation function can be selectively disabled and an alternate keystroke interpretation system provided. Additionally, the device can facilitate the selection of variants by displaying a graphic of a special key of the keypad that enables a user to progressively select variants generally without changing the position of the user’s hands on the device.”
The BlackBerry maker hasn’t really asserted their patents in the past, but with all the court battles going on in the mobile space over patent infringement, RIM should at least be confident they can hold their own in court if needs be.