Ryan Seacrest's iPhone Case Firm Fined £560,000

A firm backed by US television host Ryan Seacrest has been ordered to pay BlackBerry (Swiss: BB.SW - news) $860,000 (£564,000) for violating a court injunction.

Typo Products has been barred by a court from selling a $99 (£64) iPhone case which is likely to have infringed on BlackBerry's patents.

BlackBerry filed a suit in January last year alleging that the case - which adds a physical keyboard to the iPhone - infringes on some of its legally recognised designs.

The court issued a preliminary injunction in March barring Typo from selling the case.

BlackBerry had asked the court to fine Typo $2.6m (£1.7m) for violating the injunction, but the court settled on the lower amount of $860,600.

Typo also has to pay legal fees and costs.

A spokesman for Typo says it has since redesigned the product and the existing legal action relates to the previous design.

"It has no impact on the Typo 2 product currently in the marketplace, or our other planned product releases for the tablet."

The court found that Typo has sold nearly 19,000 of the original keyboard cases since the injunction was issued.

Typo argued that BlackBerry has not shown that it has lost any sales as a result of Typo's products.

Judge William Orrick agreed but said "Typo's not so clever attempts to evade the court's preliminary injunction" were transparent.

"The amount of sanctions awarded is only a third of what BlackBerry sought and is directly tied to additional revenue that Typo could have expected from its illegal conduct," he added.