BlackBerry's AI Cybersecurity Acquisition

In recent weeks, BlackBerry completed the acquisition of cybersecurity technology firm Cylance for a reported $1.4b. Cylance focuses on products leveraging artificial intelligence to prevent cyberattacks.

"Today BlackBerry took a giant step forward toward our goal of being the world's largest and most trusted AI-cybersecurity company," - John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry.

In the AI space, Blackberry holds over 50 matters globally. Many of these are directed to interface and network infrastructure type applications. Recently granted patent, US9883358, "Electronic Device and Method of Determining Suggested Responses to Text-Based Communications" is a good example. In this patent, BlackBerry discloses a method for suggesting responses in a messaging-type conversation on a mobile device.

Only a few matters in BlackBerry's AI-related portfolio are directed to cybersecurity-type applications - one example is: US9507925, "Mobile communications device providing heuristic security authentication features and related methods".

Cylance comes to Blackberry with a portfolio of just under 100 matters, mostly in the US, but with a handful in each of EP, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. This portfolio is very heavy on AI/Machine Learning-based innovations with application in malware detection & classification and authentication.

Worth noting - not all of the patents in the Cylance portfolio are strictly cybersecurity-related. While there are many matters combining AI with cybersecurity applications - for example, the recently published application US20180322287 entitled "Machine Learning for Malware Dynamic Analysis", there are also some more fundamental inventions like US20140379619, "Automated System For Generative Multimodel Multiclass Classification And Similarity Analysis Using Machine Learning", which focuses on machine learning based classification techniques. This is also one of the matters with more international family filings, having counterparts in Canada, EP, Japan and Australia.