We told you yesterday about RIM facing a legal suit against Bureau of Broadcast Management for the BBM name. RIM has just made a statement about this where they state that the BBM acronym, which has been used for quite long by BlackBerry users, does not interfere with Canada’s BBM and can co-exist under Canadian trademark law. This actually does make sense, let us hope it all turns out well and we get to keep BBM. Read RIM’s full statement below:

RIM Media Statement – BBM Trademark Litigation: December 23, 2011

“Since its launch in July 2005, BlackBerry Messenger has become a tremendously popular social networking service. In 2010, RIM started to formally adopt the BBM acronym, which had, at that point, already been organically coined and widely used by BlackBerry Messenger customers as a natural abbreviation of the BlackBerry Messenger name.  The services associated with RIM’s BBM offering clearly do not overlap with BBM Canada’s services and the two marks are therefore eligible to co-exist under Canadian trademark law. The two companies are in different industries and have never been competitors in any area. We believe that BBM Canada is attempting to obtain trademark protection for the BBM acronym that is well beyond the narrow range of the services it provides and well beyond the scope of rights afforded by Canadian trademark law. RIM has therefore asked the Court to dismiss the application and award costs to RIM. Further, for clarity, RIM’s application to register BBM as a trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) is pending and we are confident that a registration will eventually issue. The inference by BBM Canada that CIPO has refused RIM’s BBM trademark application is quite frankly very misleading.”