RIM has had to change the name of its latest operating system to BlackBerry 10 after Basis International Ltd, a New Mexico ISV, claimed it owned the name BBX since 1985 and got a temporary restraining order Tuesday. The court told RIM not to use the name at a three-day conference it was holding in Asia.

It is unclear if the company, which figures it's in a different market than Basis, will fight to keep the name or buy it off of Basis.

BBX was supposed to represent the blending of RIM's legendary BlackBerry OS with the bought-in QNX operating system currently running its poorly selling PlayBook tablet that is also supposed to run the company's future line of smartphones.

The company is writing off $485 million worth of Playbook inventory. With phone sales also in a slump, it doesn't expect to make its income target for the year either. That three-day service outage it had in October contributed to the shortfall.

RIM said it shipped ~150,000 tablets to retailer in the November quarter. It shipped a mere 200,000 in the August quarter and 500,000 the quarter before that while rivals sell millions.

Originally priced at $499, customers can already find the thing for as little as an unprofitable $199, the price of Amazon's also under-cost Android-based Kindle Fire.

Pitifully the PlayBook can't do e-mail yet without a BlackBerry, eight months after its debut, and has little in the way of apps.

RIM can't kill the PlayBook because it's the only thing running the new OS, a situation that observers think could maintain until next fall.

RIM's stock price is in tatters, worth a tenth of its market cap three years ago, while it's losing market share hand over fist. The company's leadership is under increasing pressure to step down.

RIM has also been embarrassed lately by the drunk and disorderly behavior of two of its now ex-executives whose belligerent conduct forced a Toronto-to-Beijing flight back to Vancouver after hours in the air (after the pair, both old enough to know better, were arrested a court ordered them to pay Air Canada $35,000 apiece).

Indonesian police also won't let RIM's Indonesian chief Andrew Cobham out of the country while they investigate a half-price BlackBerry promotion that turned into a riot.