I'd like to point out a few things. The only public statement regarding ownership of the trademarks and the IP is from Amino/Amiga Inc, made in early 2000. They claimed to have acquired the IP, the trademarks, the German subsidiary Amiga International aswell as office computers and furniture from the old (Gateway) Amiga Inc. They also said they had licensed the patents from Gateway.
(About) two years ago, the Gateway subsidiary "Amiga Development LLC" sued some other company for patent infringement, which demonstrates that at least the patents are still owned by Gateway.
That's all the public knows (or rather: "has been told", wouldn't want to rely on AmigaInc statements too much). Everybody who claims anything else is either relying on rumours (that might be true or not), or is simply making things up.
@Bodie_CI5:
When you talk of the patents expiring or are expiring, what exactly does this entail? That they are up for grabs? By patents do we mean the actual tech can be reproduced (fpr example) or something?
A patent protects an idea. If you file a patent, the patent office (theoretically) checks if the patent really covers a
new idea and then grants the patent. From now on, the patent holder is the only entity allowed to use said idea in commercial products (or license it to other parties).
However, a patent does not grant you a monopoly on your idea for lifetime - it expires after a while, to make sure the idea doesn't die with your company if you f?ck things up. In most areas of the world, patents expire after 15 (or was it 17?) years. Once a patent expires, you can't apply for another patent with the same idea, as it's no longer a new idea. The concept originally protected by the patent is now free to use for everybody.
This is a moot discussion anyway. As already mentioned, most of the Amiga patents deal with details of the hardware implementation, the only one that would be still relevant for us today is the one that covers multiple mousebutton clicks in drop down menus - and even that one should have expired everywhere by now.
