After BlackBerry initiated its patent infringement lawsuit over its keyboard design against Typo Products, a manufacturer of a keyboard case for iPhone, in January, Typo responded to the suit claiming that BlackBerry is attempting to have a monopoly over smartphone keyboards by trying to take the Typo product off the market.

The Los Angeles-based company, co-founded by American Idol host, Ryan Seacrest, has filed documents at a California court defending that the public would not confuse his product with others'.

The documents contain pictures of different keyboard designs that date as far back as Smith Corona typewriters and “strangely, BlackBerry never disclosed any of these Smith Corona products to the patent office — the QWERTY keyboard has been around since the 1870s and has been present in many messaging devices,” stated the documents.

Further, the idea for the Typo keyboard was conceived when Seacrest and its co-founder Laurence Hallier noticed a problem of their friends’ in which people were having two mobile phones with “one for typing and correspondence and an iPhone for virtually everything else,” said Typo’s website.

The Ontario, Canada-based BlackBerry, initiated its suit with specifics of its keyboard layout and the roots of the current design in meticulous detail.

BlackBerry is asking Typo to pay for damages, its profits as well as to stop selling the iPhone case but no trials have been conducted as of today.