Amiga Inc sues Hyperion VOF for trademark infringement

[Argus]

This is really unbelievable.  Why can't those *gentlemen* at Amiga, who obviously couldn't competently code a "hello world" demo, just go away and leave the OS development and by rights, this platform's future to competent people?

It is interesting though if their suit is only for trademark infringement, rather than breach of contract or copyright. That would seem to indicate Amiga is desperate indeed and has already lost on the merits of trying to wrest OS4 from Hyperion.  I suggest that the real plan of OS authors is to not call the OS by any trademarked Amiga name, rather, everyone will know it is an Amiga-derivative but Amiga, Inc. won't be able to get their incompetent greedy-Anywhere(tm) paws on it.  There is precedent for this in the Linux model.  My theory is that the kernel is already sufficiently divorced from the old 68K Exec that this is new technology.  Amiga, Inc.'s prior breach by not fulfilling financial obligations during development already allow Hyperion not to turn over their work product.  It's just a question now of whether Amiga,Inc. can restrain Hyperion from selling their new technology into the marketplace.  It would seem they (Hyperion) have a very good case if, for example: 1) there is truly no trademark (name) infringement (e.g. Hyperion could call their product something else), 2) the new kernel is unique and sufficiently divorced from the early IP (this is a technical issue and relates also/more to patent and copyright), 3) any infringement is trivial and outweighed by the benefit in releasing to the consumer, 4) even assuming an infringement exists, Hyperion can argue it was they who were constructively first and/or maintained a presence in the marketplace (anyone following this can see how Inc.'s silence and constant disappearing/re-appearing act hurts their case).  I, for one, am pulling for the Belgians!

[Argus]

jorkany wrote:
The honorable thing for Hyperion to have done would have been to go off and write the OS on their own, call it HypeOS, and bill it as Amiga-like. But no, they had to be Teh TRu3 AmiGa!!!11 Which is even funnier when you consider they had to write all the code from scratch anyway.

I think that is exactly what is happening now, just to ward off the feeble attempt by the 'Inc' to restrain a release of new hardware.  From the standpoint of trademark or copyright/patent infringement for that matter it is important to examine what happened during the last seven years.  As for copyright or patent claims, from what I understand, porting the old Exec to PPC turned out to be unworkable.  From that point forward, 68k Exec compatibility became a matter of emulation and later JIT, like UAE or MorphOS, so the current OS has little or no code compatibility with Inc.'s old IP (assuming they even still can make legal title to it).  

As for trademark, what noone seems to be considering here is whether legally Amiga 'Inc' has maintained their IP (and thus their claim to trademark) or whether through the various re-org's or simple neglect even the name 'Amiga' became abandoned legally.  You don't need to be an Uberlawyer to understand the motivation behind the 'secret request to dealers' for invoices.  This seems quite obviously an effort to document presence in the marketplace during a period when the 'Inc' company was quite dead or abandoned in the legal sense.  Heck, even the seemingly non-sensical re-hiring of the quite obviously 'in over his head' McEwen now may be nothing more than an attempt to demonstrate continuity during the period in question of the 'Inc'.

[Argus]

One thing is for sure reading through this bodge of a motion, McBill is living in a dream world.  I read it through and had to chuckle when I see that they only paid Hyperion $22,250.00 instead of the full $25K (there's a little note from Mr. Kouri saying McEwen told him he paid the other $2,250, but there's no proof...bwah ha ha).  Let that be a lesson to trusting McBill.

And so much for the OS5 crapola; it's pretty obvious there's nothing out there but what the Friedens coded.

Too bad this motion's not going to be heard until 5/25/07. Still plenty of time to butter up your popcorn. :lol:

[Argus]

The saddest thing of all is if OS4 only cost $25K I could have paid the Friedens myself.  :-D

[Argus]

@tigger

As George Tenet will tell you now, nothing is a 'slam dunk'.  What Amiga, Inc. is really after is preventing Hyperion from releasing OS4 on 'target hardware' i.e. ppc-based pursuant to their valid license under the original agreement (e.g. read their 'first to market' damage charge).  Sure, they can argue whether they successfully exercised a buyback or not, but even this isn't a total breach and the remedy would be specific performance (i.e. giving Amiga, Inc. a 'complete' version of OS4).  We have no idea, because we haven't heard from Hyperion, what exactly they have delivered or when, in their view, it was delivered.  Despite these hysterical accusations from one side, a court could very well decide that there was no breach at all and Hyperion still has a valid exclusive license for target hardware.

[Argus]

@ravnen

Great, $500 for a computer without HD, RAM, etc., sub-700MHz cpu and PCI graphics?  What is this, a six-year old spec?  This is a joke right?  Who would buy this over a PS3 or XBox360, or even a Wii?  It should be no more than $200.  Amiga, Inc. have signaled their own death...RIP