BBX name taken, has to be rebranded BlackBerry 10

More bad news for BlackBerry: BBX is banned, forcing a name change to BlackBerry 10.

A US court blocked the use of the BBX name for the next generation of BlackBerry software, the Guardian reports, as it's held as a trademark by software company Basis International.

If we were pinning our hopes on some new software to change our fortunes after a pretty dodgy year, we like to think we'd check whether the name was okay, but that's just us.

But then, we probably wouldn't name our company 'RIM'. Just sayin'.

BlackBerry maker RIM, or Research in Motion, just can't catch a break. It's been a year of job cuts in the face of stiff smart phone competition. Then there was the week-long outage that saw BlackBerry users without any Internet on their phones. Then there was the PlayBook palaver, as RIM was forced to slash its prices to sell any tablets.

And it's not just the products causing problems: two sloshed BlackBerry executives were restrained in handcuffs by aircrew aboard a plane that was forced to divert, landing them in jail and getting them fired. Another excutive has been charged for negligence after a stampede at the Indonesian launch of the BlackBerry Bold 9790 left dozens injured.

The BBX name represented the combination of BlackBerry's mobile software with the QNX software that powered the PlayBook. BBX -- sorry, BlackBerry 10 -- works on both smart phones and tablets, like the latest version of Android.

The first BB... oops, BlackBerry 10 device is rumoured to be a smart phone called the Surfboard. Now that's how you name a product, RIM!

While we're playing the name game, Apple's codenames for the iOS mobile operating system were revealed this week. Each version of the software for the iPhone and iPad is named after a different ski resort, while Android updates are named after tasty desserts. And Windows Phone updates appear to have to end with an O.