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Author Topic: Does Hyperion own the rights to OS 3.1, 3.5, 3.9?  (Read 21219 times)

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Offline cgutjahr

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Re: Does Hyperion own the rights to OS 3.1, 3.5, 3.9?
« on: October 31, 2010, 02:17:15 AM »
Quote from: Gulliver;588074
Well basicly many former CBM/escom greedy marketing guys created a bunch of empty shells [...] It really seems that the real Amiga IP owner, now probably some big dog that absorved Gateway

I'm sorry, but perhaps you should "use google or the wayback machine or ask an old enough really involved Amiga user" yourself.

German company Escom bought the remainders of Commodore in April 1995. They soon got into a legal battle with another German company (VillageTronic, IIRC - I think the argument was about VT distributing 3.1 Kickstart ROMs). In 1996, Escom went bancrupt.

In July 1997, a German appeals court ruled in the Escom-VillageTronic litigation, that the (long defunct) Escom had not provided evidence that they actually bought the AmigaOS copyrights from Commodore, not just the trademarks and patents. Escom's bancruptcy trustee tried to repair the situation by creating new contracts between two (defunct) Commodore entities and Escom - and signing them for all three parties. He was entitled to sign contracts for Commodore under certain circumstances, but if he was entitled to sign this particular contract in the name of Commodore is another unanswered question.

That's the story about the open questions regarding AmigaOS ownership - we don't know if Escom ever owned the copyrights, so we don't know if any of their successors ever owned them. Anything else (hello Gulliver) is more or less daydreaming or wishful thinking. Of course there's no proof that "Amiga Inc ever acquired AmigaOS rights from Gateway", because we never saw the contracts between Amiga Inc. and Gateway.
 

Offline cgutjahr

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Re: Does Hyperion own the rights to OS 3.1, 3.5, 3.9?
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2010, 02:25:44 AM »
Quote from: Gulliver;588258

But then, there is a company that is named Amiga Inc. that is the only one that is claiming that IP is theirs, and is even considering granting some licenses for a fee.

Amiga Inc. do indeed claim to own the IP, but they actually gave up the idea of licensing it to a third party: According to the settlement between Amiga and Hyperion, the latter got the exclusive right to license AmigaOS to third parties.

Btw., another open question is what the settlement actually refers to: "the product named AmigaOS 3.1", or "AmigaOS up to version 3.1". But I'm sure you got that covered in your lengthy and detailed analysis of the situation regarding AmigaOS 3.