cv643d wrote:
is there any truth in that?!
No. But folks here repeat it often enough and so someone will likely pop it up onto Wikipedia and a few other sites, then others will point to these sites as proof and make it into a "truth."
The real truth behind Gateway's actions may or may not have been revealed, but if you follow this industry, you can take a good guess:
1) Gateway was getting into set-top boxes and multimedia living room devices at this time.
2) Lots of others were getting into this too. Some were further along.
3) Patent Law makes innovation really difficult. It's hard to make a device that pulls together multiple ideas without having some of those ideas be patented. Once you release your product, the patent holders come out of the woodwork to get their share of your hard work.
4) Companies like Dell and Microsoft brag that their real value is in their massive backlog of patents. Consider this: You are Microsoft. You make a whizz-bang app or device, but a company comes and sues you showing that they had patented a part of the idea you at MS made into a product. Time to pay up, right?
Well, how about this: Microsoft's Lawyers discover that the company suing them also builds MP3 players, and these players use the FAT file management process. FAT is ubiquitous but is MS property and patented. So, as MS, you make a deal. Drop the patent lawsuit and grant us rights to use the technology, and we will grant you the right to use FAT, rather than countersuing! Problem solved!
5) Commodore-Amiga had patents on lots of little bits and parts of manufacturing and video display that predate similar patents from many other companies. If you are Gateway and you want to be somewhat protected from other patent holders while having some patent ammo in your back pocket, the asking price for Commodore-Amiga's IP would have been a bargain.
6) Amiga was still somewhat viable when Gateway bought it, they naturally would have given some thought to continuing Amiga itself, but this would have been secondary to the real goal of obtaining the patents.
7) Amiga's value was in the patents, not the computer business. Frankly, Gateway would probably love to have a scapegoat to blame for axing the company: "Hey! We tried but MS/the Mafia/UFOs/Karl Rove/etc. bullied us!"
As it stands today, they got off pretty easy without too much backlash for personally putting the final coffin nail in the hopes of Amiga.
