Amiga technology and patents ownership ?

[Senex]

@Oliver

Right

[bhoggett]

Yes. Commodore and Amiga became disassociated when the original C= assets were sold off. The C= name and trademark was sold off to a Dutch company called Tulip. Amiga and all related assets were sold off to Escom. There is no connection between Commodore and Amiga today.

[uncharted]

Actually IIRC both were sold to Escom.  They definately sold C= branded PCs in the short time between the Amiga sale going through and Escom going bust.

[uncharted]

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/commodore.html

[bhoggett]

uncharted wrote:
Actually IIRC both were sold to Escom.  They definately sold C= branded PCs in the short time between the Amiga sale going through and Escom going bust.

My memory must be faulty then, because I'm fairly sure I recall the Coomodore brand being sold off prior to Escom's purchase of the remaining assets and trademarks. The events listed in the link you posted do not tally with the way I remember these things.

I don't know if Escom sold Commodore PCs, but I can definitely tell you they sold Escom PCs (in the UK, through the old Rumbelows high-street chain of shops, which Escom also bought).

[Senex]

Escom bought the whole package. Gateway was the first one being interested in Amiga (patents) only.

That's how I noted it down back then (in German) on a former Amiga history website and as I've just seen it at Wikipedia as well:

"Escom paid US$14 million for Commodore International, primarily for the Commodore brand name. It separated the Commodore and Amiga operations into separate divisions and quickly started using the brand name on a line of PCs sold in Europe. However, it quickly started losing money, went bankrupt on July 15, 1996, and was liquidated.

In September 1997, the Commodore brand name was acquired by Dutch computer maker Tulip Computers NV."

[bhoggett]

Senex wrote:
Escom bought the whole package. Gateway was the first one being interested in Amiga (patents) only.

That's how I noted it down back then (in German) on a former Amiga history website and as I've just seen it at Wikipedia as well:

"Escom paid US$14 million for Commodore International, primarily for the Commodore brand name. It separated the Commodore and Amiga operations into separate divisions and quickly started using the brand name on a line of PCs sold in Europe. However, it quickly started losing money, went bankrupt on July 15, 1996, and was liquidated.

In September 1997, the Commodore brand name was acquired by Dutch computer maker Tulip Computers NV."

Yes, fair do'. I stand corrected.

I can confirm that they didn't use the Commodore brand in the UK. They sold their PCs under the Escom brand here, as I said, in their own chain of high-street shops. Occasionally, those shops would have an Amiga somewhere under a pile of boxes at the back, but the staff rarely knew anything about them.

Nevertheless, the fact that Commodore and Amiga have nothing more in common these days remains true. The re-appearance of the Commodore brand is immaterial.

[uncharted]

bhoggett wrote:

I can confirm that they didn't use the Commodore brand in the UK. They sold their PCs under the Escom brand here, as I said, in their own chain of high-street shops. Occasionally, those shops would have an Amiga somewhere under a pile of boxes at the back, but the staff rarely knew anything about them.

They did use C= in the UK, for a small line of PCs.  Yes, most were branded Escom, but they also sold C= Branded PCs, but only for a very short time before they went Belly up.

[zacman]

From that listing one can't conclude that the Amiga operating system would have been part of that buyout.

No, that's not what it says. Often understood in a wrong way, even by me :-D

lässt sich deshalb nicht hinreichend überprüfbar entnehmen, daß die X. die ausschliesslichen Lizenzrechte an dem Betriebssystem erworben hat."

You don't need an exclusive right (ausschliessliches Recht) to license it to other third parties. What the court just said is that the contract doesn't say if there are any other parties left that have the right of distribution on AmigaOS.

That's what the law suit was all about. Some third party was sued because they sold copies of AmigaOS3.1 which according to them was legal as they have distribution rights. AT/Escom said that they have the exclusive rights to AmigaOS. However as the "dumb German judge" decided the contract didn't say that Escom got all exclusive rights with the buyout. Therfore Escom lost the law suit.

This law suit would only matter if nowadays some third party comes and sells OS3.1 and could show some AmigaOS3.1 license agreement from the Commodore era to AInc.

[Senex]

Yes, as Ralph said in my first comment's link and as I translated then as well - the judgement itself in its conclusion is about the exclusive rights.

But nevertheless to me this seems as if it would have been possible for MorphOS to focus on the A-Box environment back then and just ship it with WB 3.1 IF they would have obtained that other licence (which IIRC refers to VT). Or AROS could have started with kind of AfA back then already on m68k or even better an x86 A-Box.

[Colin_Camper]

There is no connection between Commodore and Amiga today.

Maybe not legal (or business) but they have links to the Amiga community on their website!  :-)


Commodore - Link is mid RHS on page

[weirdami]

Patents only last 10 years, so anything that C= had is no longer patented.

[snowman040]

First I'd like to thank you all for answering, seems like Amiga story is very complicated

What I really wanted to know is if some company X (for example) would like to buy all Amiga IP, brand name, patents, etc, etc... how complicated it would be, and how much money it would take ? (feel free to guess)

From what I learned so far:

- Brand name and patents are held by Gateway
- Amiga Inc, Amino or whoever licenced brand name and .... ?
- Hyperion licenced Amiga OS rights (or is just developing OS4  for Amiga inc.?)

and it looks like 1000 lawyers can't deal with this mess ...

[minator]

Patents only last 10 years, so anything that C= had is no longer patented.

Actually 20 years, still anything from the original will soon expire if it hasn't already.

[bloodline]

snowman040 wrote:
First I'd like to thank you all for answering, seems like Amiga story is very complicated

What I really wanted to know is if some company X (for example) would like to buy all Amiga IP, brand name, patents, etc, etc... how complicated it would be, and how much money it would take ? (feel free to guess)

From what I learned so far:

- Brand name and patents are held by Gateway

No, the IP and Patents are held by Gateway, but the patents will have expired by now so are valueless. The IP is 20 years old too, so isn't of much value... Denises Minimig IP has MUCH more value!

- Amiga Inc, Amino or whoever licenced brand name and .... ?

No, Amino bought the trademarks/Brand (Amiga) and obtained a licence to use the IP and patents.

- Hyperion licenced Amiga OS rights (or is just developing OS4  for Amiga inc.?)

Hyperion apperantly bought a licence to develop a PowerPC version of AmigaOS called Amiga Os 4.x

and it looks like 1000 lawyers can't deal with this mess ...

I'm not a lawyer :-D

[koaftder]

amiga1084 wrote:
Hello All,

I still believe the rumor that Bill Gates/MicroShaft scared
Gateway to stop making,marking new Amiga.Why would you buy
the rights if all you want are the patents.Gateway was &
still is just other PC Clone company what are the patents worth
to them.They wanted to change but good old Billy Boy wouldn't
let them.Thats my opinion and I am sticking to it.Merv

Maybe gateway bought amiga just to get better barganing leverage on microsoft.