Research in Motion (RIM) has begun legal proceedings in the US against LG, claiming the South Korean company's Black Label brand is too close to its own BlackBerry trademark, Bloomberg reports.

RIM - colloquially called 'Lawsuits in Motion' - has form. In December 2006, it sent Samsung a similar lawsuit, this time complaining about the phone maker's BlackJack handset brand which, again, it alleged would confuse consumers out to buy a BlackBerry.

The two companies settled their differences in February 2007. Samsung agreed to drop the BlackJack name and not attempt to register it as a trademark.

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Of course, Samsung's handset actually looked a bit like a BlackBerry: big screen, black casing, Qwerty microkeyboard. No one can say the same of LG's Black Label handsets, the popular Chocolate and the newer Shine.

In fact, arguably few consumers know these phones by the broader brandname - to most folk they are simply the Chocolate and the Shine.

RIM recently settled a lawsuit brought against it for alleged patent infringement.