You know the popular messaging service Kik — the one that took-off like a wildfire in the California hills? Well, Research In Motion actually just filed a lawsuit against Kik claiming patent infringement. This is after RIM suddenly removed Kik from their App World distribution store in addition to terminating their developer account and access. The court filing is public, but we haven’t been able to find the claim yet. We’re assuming it has to do with how Kik visualizes sent, delivered, and read notifications, and have reached out to both Kik and RIM for comment and clarification. CEO of Kik, Ted Livingston, wouldn’t comment on the recently filed lawsuit, but said that Kik would “be putting something out” soon. With 2.5 million users after its launch a little more than a month ago, it’s very interesting to see how RIM is handling this situation, as Kik is one of the first — and largest — credible threats to their BlackBerry Messenger product. Should WhatsApp, PingChat, and other messaging services be worried now that RIM has decided to take legal action? We’ll do some digging and update this story when we hear back from RIM.
