Texas Farm Bureau’s lawsuit filed Monday accuses BlackBerry Farm, an app that connects farmers to a smartphone for data analytics and farming data, of infringing on a patent that covers the use of “mobile telephony” to collect farm data.
The Texas Farm Bulletin reported the Texas Farm Department’s lawsuit against Blackberry was filed in U.S. District Court in Dallas.
BlackBerry Farm’s CEO, Michael Glynn, has denied the claims.
“We have no interest in suing the Texas Agriculture Department, which is a private agency that oversees Texas farmers and has no role in protecting Texas agriculture,” Glynn said in a statement to Crypto Coins.
The Texas Farm Service Agency is also not a party in the case.
Blackberry Farm also says the company has no connection to the Texas Agricultural Marketing Program.
Blackberries app is free and works on any smartphone.
The app connects farmers with the Blackberry smartphone.
Blackburn Farms lawsuit comes on the heels of a similar lawsuit filed in Texas on Monday against Apple Inc. Apple has been accused of patent infringement in the Blackberries app.
The Blackberry application says Blackberry can collect and analyze data for farmers and businesses.
Blackbriars app includes a “Farm-to-Market” feature that lets users log their fields of harvest and send a farmer an email when it’s time to harvest.
BlackBriars’ farm data is shared with other companies, and Blackberry uses the data to send emails to farmers who have purchased products from Blackberries.
The Blackberry apps farm data and analytics allows users to track how much the farm is producing and sell products to customers.
Blackbuck’s attorney, Greg Brown, told the Texas Tribune that the company “has no connection” to Blackberry and has never sold products from the Blackbriar app.
“Blackbreeze is not a third-party app vendor and Blackbreezy’s app is not used to make money, but to collect and report farm data,” Brown said in an email.
Blackbucks data is used to provide analytics for its retail and restaurant businesses.
The company’s data is collected by third-parties and aggregated to create a wealth of information about the companies customers, according to a statement provided to the Dallas Morning News.
Blackmores attorneys told the Tribune that Blackberrys farm data, including the data collected by Blackbroughs app, is available to third- parties and that Blackmores data is not shared with third parties, the paper reported.
The lawsuit also claims that the BlackBerry Farm app infringes on Blackberry’s patent for “mobile data communication.”
The Texas Agriculture department said in its statement that it is not responsible for the actions of third parties.
“As a federal agency, the Texas Department of Agriculture has no authority to enforce patent claims,” the statement said.
The farm bureau also filed a lawsuit against Google Inc. for alleged patent infringement.
The suit alleges that Google uses Blackberry as a platform for search engines to collect information about Texas farmers.