Friday was Valentine’s Day, and I hoped to share with you some Canadian tech-themed Valentine’s messages the team had drafted, but on advice from counsel, we’ve decided to keep them in our Slack. The Cohere and Shopify ones were particularly good, as you might imagine (and will now have to).
So instead I’ll tell you a love story about an old flame: Canadian Patent 2497122, also known as KEYBOARD FOR MOBILE DEVICES. How best to describe her? Only in the abstract:
A keyboard comprising a plurality of transparent keys. In use, the keyboard is attached to a device such as a mobile device, to overlie a display screen of the device. One or more images displayed on the display screen are made visible to a user through the keys, which may be pressed by a user. User input is determined by identifying a pressed key, and the image or part thereof visible through the key when pressed.
Short and sweet, this patent was one of several to help my old employer Research in Motion become Canada’s then-largest tech company, reaching some 80 million BlackBerry smartphone subscribers worldwide in 2011.
Canadian patents only last 20 years, and 2497122—issued Feb. 15, 2005—expired on Saturday. A quick search of the Canadian Patent Database shows that many of its brethren have also expired or are about to.
Was this the most important patent in the history of Canadian tech? Was it even the most important patent in RIM’s portfolio? The answer to both questions is probably not, but love isn’t about facts: it’s about feeling!
It’s also a reminder that what’s important in the moment might not be for much longer. The iPhone was released three years after the patent was issued, and three years after that BlackBerry smartphone sales peaked before cratering in 2013.
Still, I prefer to remember my old loves fondly, so 2497122 will remain in my mind as a testament to Canadian ingenuity and productivity.
Have a Canadian tech patent (expired or otherwise) you love more? Send it to me.
Douglas Soltys
Editor-in-chief
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TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK
Major media companies sue Cohere for alleged copyright infringement
A group of major North American media companies filed a lawsuit against Toronto-based generative artificial intelligence (AI) startup Cohere last week, alleging that it engaged in “massive, systematic copyright infringement and trademark infringement.”
The consortium of publishers suing Cohere includes The Atlantic, Condé Nast, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, the Toronto Star, and Vox, among others.
The publishers’ complaint alleges that Cohere has scraped copies of their articles from the internet without permission or compensation and used them to power its AI services.
Shopify’s strong Q4 earnings complicated by Kanye West Nazi T-shirt controversy
Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify’s strong fourth-quarter earnings last week were overshadowed by reaction to the news that Kanye West was selling a Nazi t-shirt via Shopify-powered Yeezy.com.
The controversial American rapper and producer promoted his Shopify-powered Yeezy store in an advertisement during the Super Bowl, leading prospective customers to find a single product: a white T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. After hosting the site for nearly two days with no public comment on the matter, Shopify confirmed to BetaKit that it had removed the Yeezy store.
This controversy comes as Shopify posted strong Q4 2024 financial results that beat its previous forecast for revenue growth and included a tidy profit on the back of a strong holiday season and another record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend.
Canada looks to strike balance between AI innovation and regulation at Paris AI Summit
Under outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, Canada reaffirmed its commitment to responsible AI development at the AI Action Summit in Paris last week as the United States and the European Union grow further apart in their approaches to regulating the tech.
At the Summit, Canada signed an international treaty and a statement that prioritized human rights, accessibility, and transparency in AI development. Alongside Trudeau’s public remarks, the signing indicates an alignment with the EU’s pro-regulatory approach to AI, while the new US administration decries “excessive” regulation.
Canadian tech companies, meanwhile, have had mixed reactions.
Canadian tech looks to support its own against US tariff threat
Since the onset of a Canada-US trade war, Canadians have doubled down on buying local, and Canadian tech has been no exception.
Ecosystem players spearheaded a crop of tariff-response initiatives last week, designed to promote products from fellow Canadian startups, track the impact of tariffs on supply chains, and encourage consumers to buy domestically made products.
Knix, Hopper, Grammarly founders among business leaders asking for “immediate recall” of Parliament
A number of Canadian tech CEOs and investors are part of a group calling for the “immediate recall” of Parliament to face the “uncertainty” presented by economic threats from the US.
An open letter signed by over 100 business leaders demanded the immediate resumption of Parliament to ensure the Canadian government can “confront head-on the current crisis and be able to adapt to our new reality and, most importantly, deal productively with the US government.” The letter was sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and leaders of the opposition parties last week.
Crowd Control: PixMob lit up this year’s Super Bowl stands
You may not have realized it, but while the Philadelphia Eagles were lighting up the Kansas City Chiefs during Super Bowl LIX Sunday night, a Canadian company was lighting up the stands.
All 75,000 fans inside New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome received a PixMob LED light bracelet for the NFL championship match, turning the stands into a “human-resolution screen” that punctuated touchdowns, kickoffs, and the pre-game ceremony with lighting animations and effects.
Loopio’s Zak Hemraj shares tips for Canadian CEOs leading teams through “crisis after crisis”
At a TechTO event last Monday, TechTO co-founder Alex Norman described the ongoing US-Canada trade dispute as part of a continuum of disruptions faced by Canadian tech founders over the past five years, including COVID-19, inflation, and the evolution of AI.
Loopio CEO Zak Hemraj, who took the stage with Norman, acknowledged that his cohort of Canadian technology CEOs have faced exceptionally complex times, and shared some tips he’d learned through it all.
FEATURED STORIES FROM OUR PARTNERS
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Weekly Canadian Deals & Dollars
- BRN – Clio donates $3M CAD to create new innovation hub at UBC
- VAN – GTMfund closes $54M USD for second operator-led VC fund
- VAN – Photonic claims quantum computing error correction leap
- EDM – PrairiesCan doles out $6.7M CAD to four companies
- CGY – Canada Growth Fund commits up to $50M CAD to Longbow
- KW – FedDev invests $18M CAD across startups and new tech hubs
- TOR – Thomson Reuters launches second corporate VC fund
- TOR – Clutch recovers valuation with $50M CAD Series D round
- TOR – FedDev invests $16M CAD in life science hubs and startups
- TOR – Alexi secures $4.5M venture debt for AI litigation software
- TOR – Payfare defends acquisition deal from shareholder dissent
- MTL – Femtech startup Coral raises $4.1M CAD seed round
The BetaKit Podcast — AI’s new moat with Coveo’s Louis Têtu
“You’re going to see Coveo starting to invest quite aggressively actually to be a market taker. We’re not a disrupted company. We’re a market taker in AI.”
Coveo’s current CEO and future executive chair, Louis Têtu, joins to discuss the applied AI company’s earnings performance and where the market is heading in the face of customer fatigue and DeepSeek disruption.
Take The BetaKit Quiz – This week: Musk eyes OpenAI, Shopify’s Kanye problem, and a Canadian startup at the Super Bowl
Think you’re on top of Canadian tech and innovation news? Time to prove it. Test your knowledge of Canadian tech news with The BetaKit Quiz for Feb. 14, 2025.
Feature image courtesy Canadian Patents Database.