@Gizmomelb
There is a
german source by Rainer Benda (former employee of Commodore Germany and Amiga Technologies).
A quick summary:
On the CD-ROM "Kickstart Archive", published by Thomas Unger, there is a chapter "Patente", which does list what has been purchased by Escom under the patent number "US 5,594,473" from Commodore back then.
From that listing one can't conclude that the Amiga operating system would have been part of that buyout.
On July 16, 1997, there has been a judgement (13 U 97/97) by the Higher Regional Court in Celle, Lower Saxony, Germany, which does contain the following paragraph:
"In den zwischen der Commodore-Amiga-Gruppe und der X. geschlossenen Veträgen ist nur von -sämtlichen aufgrund der Patente bestehenden Rechte, Titel und Rechtsansprüche- die Rede; das Betriebssystem OS3.1 ist dort nicht als solches bezeichnet. Den vorgelegten Unterlagen über eine Vereinbarung zwischen diesen Parteien vom 13.03.1995 lässt sich deshalb nicht hinreichend überprüfbar entnehmen, daß die X. die ausschliesslichen Lizenzrechte an dem Betriebssystem erworben hat."
In short it says that in the contracts with the Commodore-Amiga group only those rights are mentioned which are based on the patents - but that the operating system itself wouldn't be mentioned as such. Based on the documents from March 13, 1995, there is no sufficient proof of exclusive rights to the operating system.
Furthermore the court did rebuke the lack of lucidity of the situation.
