Blackberry 2015 Annual Report Download - page 24

Table of Contents
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Canadian employees and to certain annual maximum amounts through fiscal 2015, not exceeding total royalty payments of $45
million. The Company recorded $4.9 million (CAD) on account of TPC royalty repayment expense with respect to the
obligation during fiscal 2015. The last payment for the obligation will be made in fiscal 2016.
The Company also qualifies for investment tax credits (“ITC”) on eligible expenditures on account of Canadian scientific
research and experimental development. In fiscal 2015, the Company recognized the benefits of its ITC in its consolidated
statements of operations.
Third Party Software Developers
The Company provides a feature-rich open standards-based development platform, which allows third party commercial and
enterprise software developers to build and deploy custom applications to run on BlackBerry smartphones. To facilitate this, the
Company provides a number of products and technologies to third party developers, wireless carriers and enterprise customers
to enable them to develop, distribute and manage these applications. For application development, the Company provides a
suite of software development tools for BlackBerry smartphones, enabling applications to be developed using technologies
such as Java, HTML5, Javascript®, and Native C/C++/Qt with OpenGL® ES support. BlackBerry 10 will run most Android
JellyBean 4.3 applications without any code changes. The Company also provides a variety of advanced services to application
developers to enable them to develop deeply integrated applications that leverage online network services. These advanced
services include the BlackBerry Messenger Social Apps Platform, Push Service, Payments Service, Location Service, Maps
Services, and Analytics Service. Using these services, developers can create applications that take advantage of integrated
social networking services, push notifications, in-app payments and advertising, advanced location services, and application
usage information.
BlackBerry 10.3 preloads the Amazon Appstore with access to over 200,000 apps. Developers are encouraged to distribute
their business and productivity apps through BlackBerry World and consumer apps through Amazon Appstore. However,
developers have the choice of which store they use to distribute their applications.
QNX CAR 2.1, based on the QNX 6.6 Software Development Platform, has the ability to run the Android Jellybean 4.2.2
application without any code changes.
The Company embraces open standards and includes a variety of open source libraries out of the box including Lua, OpenAL,
cocos2d-x, and Box2D and has an open source repository that can be accessed at github.com/blackberry.
For distribution and management of enterprise applications, the Company provides a suite of tools and technologies within
BES12 to enable secure and managed provisioning of applications to enterprise employees. This includes capabilities for both
commercial packaged application and in-house corporate applications. Enabling vertically focused enterprise applications is a
key focus of BlackBerry.
For distribution of personal and consumer applications, the Company provides wireless carriers with the ability to distribute
select applications and rich media content to their customer base and also provides BlackBerry World as a direct storefront for
BlackBerry customers.
Intellectual Property
The policy of the Company is to apply for patents, acquire and/or seek other appropriate proprietary or statutory protection
when it develops valuable new or improved technology. The Company believes that the rapid pace of technological change in
the communications industry makes patent and trade secret protection important, and that this protection must be supported by
other means including the ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, new product introductions and frequent product
enhancements.
The Company protects its technology through a combination of patents, designs, copyrights, trade secrets, confidentiality
procedures and contractual arrangements. The Company seeks to patent key concepts, components, protocols, processes and
other inventions that it considers to have commercial value or that will likely give the Company a technological advantage.
Although the Company applies for patent protection primarily in Canada, Europe and the United States, the Company has filed,
and will continue to file, patent applications in other countries where there exists a strategic technological or business reason to
do so. To broadly protect the Company’s inventions, the Company has a team of in-house patent attorneys and also consults
with outside patent attorneys who interact with employees, review invention disclosures and prepare patent applications on a
broad array of core technologies and competencies. As a result, the Company owns rights to an array of patented and patent
pending technologies relating to wireless communication technology.
It is the Company’s general practice to enter into confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with its employees,
consultants, contract manufacturers, customers, potential customers and others to attempt to limit access to, and distribution of,
its proprietary information. In addition, the Company generally enters into agreements with employees that include an
assignment to the Company of all intellectual property developed in the course of employment.