[News] Order on Plantiff's Motion in Thendic Amiga Case | ANN.lu |
Posted on 18-Mar-2004 04:10 GMT by Rich Woods | 81 comments View flat View list |
ORDER granting in part and denying in part 49 Plaintiff's Motion to Modify Order re 47 Court's Order Granting Specific Performance, by Judge Robert S. Lasnik.(AF, ) (Entered: 03/17/2004)
ORDER granting in part and denying in part 49 Plaintiff's Motion to Modify Order re 47 Court's Order Granting Specific Performance, by Judge Robert S. Lasnik.(AF, ) (Entered: 03/17/2004)<
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Order on Plantiff's Motion in Thendic Amiga Case : Comment 54 of 81 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 18-Mar-2004 17:48 GMT | In reply to Comment 34 (Anonymous): I still don't understand, if that is what Genesi wanted then why didn't they just pay AmigaInc ? If the result is exactly the same: there will be AmigaDE for the Pegasos and Genesi will pay Amigainc, then why did you need lawsuit? Why you guys have to make everything as difficult as possible ? :)
AI and Thendic had a vaguely worded contract from the days when Thendic were going to enter the portable business (Smartboy, Eclipsis) ... The contract was for licensing ($4.50/device shipped) at presumably $0 down; Thendic gets absorbed into Genesi, the Smartboy's forgotten, Eclipsis isn't here yet, and for a while it was unclear if the Pegasos was a dead end (cancellation of the I, at what was it, 300-600 units for all revisions? Multiply that by $4.50 and it's not particularly business-efficient; then add in the fact that - true, in possible bad faith to the contract and, as it turns out, possible irritance to AI's angels - it would've given Genesi bragging rights to DE before AI had a desktop.
AI, for the two-pronged business model, did about the most rational thing it could, especially if relations with the investors were poor enough to preclude actually paying someone to port the thing for Genesi - stall.* ** *** (If the hearings went smoothly yet AI failed to produce, they'd probably have faced a stiff penalty. The monkey business at least alerts the judge to the strangeness of it all.) At some point, someone realizes that having all these conflicts of interest really does suck, and we get McEwen's lip service to splitting the company, which now seems to have been happened, though maybe not in the form anyone expected...****
Finally, Genesi get their favorable decision, and show their true colors by making the grab for OS4. For reasons that I'm having a hard time keeping track of, the judge shoots them down on this before AI even shows up with the dramatic, if possibly misfiled, legal reappearance. This also marks at least the second time in the action that Genesi's declared victory before the judge has actually ruled.
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*It's also worth remembering that VP binaries are likely to disassemble very easily...
**Getting the necessary development system to port the thing for Genesi may've also entailed agreeing to some potentially compromising paperwork.
***Lord knows who paid the legal fees. On the other hand, it seems obvious that, for a while, no one did.
****It's up for debate whether this is savvy business or asset-stripping; I'm going to assume the latter's not actionable by the state until a bankruptcy actually occurs or the corporation fails to keep their business license and stays that way (or, at least, some other reasonable evidence turns up) ... but IANAL and I haven't slept, either. Genesi could presumably figure out how to bring suit and maybe even deal what's left of AI a wrecking ball, but that still wouldn't get them the trademark directly, and it'd be even harder to get OS4, since that's always been handled in terms of an option that one hopes was written well enough to be non-transferable. (What's left of AI can transfer the handy prerequisites for exercising the option - trademark, and whatever CBM properties are owned that gave AI authority to authorize anyone to build atop them in the first place - to Itec or KMOS or whoever, and then Hyperion can swing a new and possibly more favorable deal with them, as apparently happened.)
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Now, we know f'-all about what KMOS has going with Hyperion now, but if it gets KMOS full rights over the sources, then sure, it's possible that they could, in turn, sell Genesi a license or the whole thing directly (Who was he handing those funny business cards to? Everyone seems to like him...), assuming Genesi's going to bother to keep trying, and negotiations don't go the way they did last time. ... That's only going to happen if this is no more than a way for the investors to recoup a quick buck and bug out (in which case Hyperion and Eyetech have had plenty of time to have made sure they won't get screwed into paying fealty to anyone they don't like), but I'm expecting a lot of deja-vu either way.
My predictions:
Stage 1: KMOS is either going to try to keep a custodian position, a-la Novell/SCO with UNIX, or they'll liquidate to the highest bidder. Staying on as custodian would see them try to sit down with Genesi-the-shunned-customer, at which point it blows up in their face like last time, or, as with liquidation (would Hyperion and Eyetech bid up for what they already own?), we advance straight to stage 2.
Stage 2: If Genesi get their hands on 4 in any form, they will immediately claim exclusive rights (whether or not they find an excuse to have a basis), and engage Hyperion in a fairly long and expensive legal battle to prove them wrong. Before the outcome is determined, terrorists (or possibly CIA operatives, but that's another debate) who've taken advantage of lax security on Air France flights launch simultaneous attacks worldwide, sparking a thermonuclear WWIII which, through a rather complicated chain of events, leaves Steve Ballmer and Eugenia Loli-Queru the only two people left on Earth, which is then destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace bypass seconds before it would've been struck by a killer asteroid.
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