AmigaDE Case and US Courts

[bhoggett]

@asian1

I'm going to stay away from the court case, because I know nothing about it.

3. Tao Group (UK): Because TAO is a UK company, the US court ruling does not apply to TAO Group. Beside the agreement is between Amiga Inc and Thendic, and TAO IS NOT INVOLVED in the agreement. Is this true?

It depends on the contract between TAO and Amiga Inc, and what rights TAO give Amiga Inc in that contract.

Certainly it is the case that Amiga Inc cannot turn over any Intent source code to Genesi, no matter what the court says, unless the contract between TAO and Amiga Inc grants them the right to distribute the source code under certain conditions.

4. It is impossible to port AmigaDE to Pegasos, without porting the basic software (INTENT). AmigaDE run on top of INTENT. If someone port AmigaDE to Pegasos without porting INTENT, how can they run the AmigaDE without any Intent?

They can't. Either the contract between TAO and Amiga Inc gives the latter the right to distribute the source under license, or else Genesi must reach a separate agreement with TAO.

There is a third possibility: The contract between Amiga and TAO could require the latter to port Intent to any platform to whom Amiga Inc legitimately license AmigaDE (or AmigaAnywhere or whatever they want to call it this week).

[bhoggett]

@raddydaddy

Sure, but what would Ainc lose from porting the DE?

I don't think the issue is about porting DE as much as it is about letting Genesi use the "Amiga" trademark to market their products.

Apparently the contract Genesi have allows them to do this for any system on which AmigaDE runs, so if the contract is valid and binding, then porting AmigaDE to MorphOS (or even Linux PPC) may well allow them to market the Pegasos as an "Amiga" system.

AmigaDE itself is pretty useless for desktop application at the moment, and a very poor choice for the "write once run everywhere" developer today.  This may change, but considering progress over the past three years, I wouldn't hold my breath.

[bhoggett]

@asian1

Perhaps Genesi had won the case in District
courts, but Amiga Inc had submitted an appeal
to 9th Circuit courts. Is this the real status?

No, Bill Buck explained that there has been no court decision. He said Amiga's legal consel dropped the Amiga countersuit against Genesi and agreed to the licensing. There has been no independent confirmation of this, or of Mr. Buck's interpretation.  The court clerk has not been made aware of any resolution in the case according to Rich Woods, and the case is still scheduled to be heard later this year.

It's not a case of one court having made a decision and an appeal having been lodged with a superior court. There simply has been no decision and no resolution to the case according to court records.