BlackBerry has chosen Ron Louks as its new president, devices and emerging solutions, the latest recruit for the embattled vendor following a wave of executive departures at the end of 2013.

Louks joins from The OpenNMS Group, an open source solutions provider, where he was CEO.

Previous stints as chief strategy officer of HTC America and CTO of Sony Ericsson demonstrate his grounding in the handset industry.

Last month, BlackBerry appointed ex-SAP executive John Sims to head its enterprise division, an incoming move that followed a number of moves to the door by senior executives at the back end of 2013.

Separately, BlackBerry has shown its willing to defend its turf with a lawsuit against Typo Products, the firm behind a keyboard that is designed to fit onto an iPhone (pictured).

BlackBerry complains the Typo keyboard infringes its patents by copying BlackBerry’s own keyboard

Typo, which was founded by entrepreneur Laurence Hallier and TV presenter Ryan Seacrest, announced its keyboard would be available for pre-order this month.

“We are flattered by the desire to graft our keyboard onto other smartphones, but we will not tolerate such activity without fair compensation for using our intellectual property and our technological innovations,” said Steve Zipperstein, BlackBerry’s general counsel and chief legal officer.