Legal threats from Harald Frank

[Argo]

This looks like it : http://www.vmc.de/

[weirdami]

I'm confused. Is Harald complaining about the Umilator poll news item? Is he claiming that "Umilator" is a word owned by him?

In any case, I don't think there is any legal action he could take. If I knew what the deal was, I'd have made a post with a 1000 statements of that word (or words or whatever) because there's nothing Harald could do. Wayne might have some say, though. :-)

[odin]

You know....I would love to meet some of the Amigaland-villageidiots  who populate the internet IRL. Just to see how they really are.

[N7VQM]

walter said:

Unless he is stopped, probably by judicial authority, Harald Frank is going to continue threatening and abusing Amithlon users, Bernie's friends and supporters and potential Umilator partners.

If there were enough of us and a way to prove damages, I'd say start a class action lawsuit against HF.   Sadly, such an action would create more problems than it would solve in our small market.  Not to mention, any damages that could be recovered from the deliquent parties probably isn't worthy of small claims court.

Incendentally, what is the legal status of copies of Amithlon (gonna sue me, Mr Frank?) sold to consumers before Mr. Meyer declared breach?  Are those copies concidered legal or illegal?

[dammy]

Since the Amithlon blow up, I simply thought Mr Frank was an asshole, clear down to the bone.  With his latest threat, i'm changing my mind about Mr. Frank.  It's becoming clear, atleast to me, that he has serious mental and or emotional stability problems.  In other words, he's a few french fries short of a  Happy Meal.

Please, show him pity and not anger.  He is in dire need of professional help and this should be considered when replying to him.  He can't help it if he's mentally ill afterall.

Dammy

[redcougar]

Holy freakin' cow... is this guy for real? I thought I've seen much but this stuff..

/rant mode on

To Mr. ####-for-brains, who sent the original post to Wayne, GET REAL! And while you are at it, get a life too, if you don't have anything better to do than make trouble with potential buyers, instead of developing something (which ain't yours from the beginning) good.

/rant mode off

[System]

> Incendentally, what is the legal status of copies of Amithlon (gonna
>  sue me, Mr Frank?) sold to consumers before Mr. Meyer declared breach?
>  Are those copies concidered legal or illegal?
There are several issues here. First of all, any copies shipped by H&P before I instructed them (in accordance with the distribution contract) to cease distribution *do* come with proper licenses to *my* work. Any copies shipped by H&P after that date do not, as far as I am concerned, come with such licenses (and just in case someone wonders --- I have also never accepted a single cent from such copies).
The second issue is that of Amiga Inc IP. As far as anyone can tell, H&P never had a license for the distribution of Kickstart images, and whether their distribution of OS 3.9 as part of AmigaOS XL was legitimate is at least dubious. So it seems pretty clear customers did not receive a license for at least the Kickstart ROM, as H&P never was in a position to sell such licenses.
That being said, both Amiga Inc and I take the view that anyone who bought AmigaOS XL in good faith (i.e. without being aware of the issues) has shown a desire to do the right thing, and to support everyone involved. Given how common and easy piracy is, nobody has any interest in punishing such customers for doing the right thing, and thus both Amiga Inc and me are happy for such customers to continue the use of our respective IP, and hope they are enjoying it.
Of course, if you are in doubt as to exactly what you did or didn't get as part of your AmigaOS XL purchase, I would encourage you to pose that question to your dealer, or directly to H&P.

[whabang]

*sigh*
People just take themselves too seriously théese days. What's next? sueing the WinUAE team? :roll:

[T_Bone]

> Here's my offer to Harald Frank. Two dollars and a
> six pack of Guinness for the source code and ...

That's a generous offer, but the only source that appears in Umilator that's related to A*ith**n are already licensed under the GPL and are freely available to Bernd for use in Umilator. Harald would be off his nut to claim the Linux Kernel or the GPL modifications to it belong to him. I believe there's a certain longhair that would have something to say about that claim.

> licensing for your product called Amithlon.

The only parts I can think of that would need to be licensed are A) Haralds code, and B) the trademark.  The code has been disposed of and is no longer needed, so scratch A, and the trademark is disputable, but the trademark is not being used anyway, so that's moot as well.

> I want to donate whatever contributions were
> made to the Umilator sources

ie: none. None of Haralds code was used. Harald, AFAIK claims the "concept" of his code belongs to him. This is mooted as well, as Bernd, from the looks of the feature lists has not only rewritten the parts he needed, but implemented them in a different way, for example, the networking being handled by the linux kernel, the way the parallel ports are now implemented is also completely different. His so called "concept", as loose a case as it is, wasn't even used.

That leaves no technical or legal reason for Harald to cite, so he resorts to his last desparate tactic...

> so that product can continue in peace.

...Peace. Harald is going to publicaly and privately harass everyone who has anything to do with Umilator, a product he has no claims to, none at all. We've all seen the public displays, and most have heard rumors about the private displays.

It's harmless. The dog has no teeth. The dog has no legs to stand on.  All it can do is bark and slober.

I'm estatic that this project is finally moving forward, it (and Bernd) deserves to succeed.

[Ivan]

Give em hell Bernie! Glad to see you still alive and kicking.

Is there a copy of your contract(s) with H&P around somewhere? I'd like a look if possible. Anyway, i'd say as soon as they stopped paying you and kept selling after you invoked that clause that they were in breach. And that's good enough for any court.

As for Aorg, H&P don't have a leg to stand on. (thanks for the laugh though Harold. is your lawyer on vacation and you thought you'd do a little legal work on your own behalf?)

Ivan

[Ivan]

>The only parts I can think of that would need to be licensed are A) Haralds code, and B) the trademark.

Are you kidding, what trademark? H&P never registered a trademark for Amithilon so, they don't own it.

This is just as bad as that moron over at CUAUG claiming that he owns all links to anything Amiga related.

Ivan

[nyteschayde]

Do any of you know Darek Mihocka? He is the developer of a piece of crapware called SoftMac XP. It is a classic Macintosh emulator (68K only) that runs under Windows. The guy has the mind of a child and is by far one of the most inane and frustrating people in the world to talk to. There is a somewhat shameful, on my part due to my continuation of replies, account of our email correspondence. He has been bragging to offer PPC emulation on an x86 system for sometime. If you are interested in reading it you can find it here.

To make a long story short he reminds me quite a bit of Harald Frank. They should become friends.

[T_Bone]

> >The only parts I can think of that would need to
> > be licensed are A) Haralds code, and B) the
> > trademark.

> Are you kidding, what trademark? H&P never
> registered a trademark for Amithilon so, they don't
> own it.

like I said, it's disputable Although, the name isn't used anyway... Even giving HF every concievable benefit of the doubt, he still has no case.

What I'd like to know, is **WHAT** SPECIFICALLY in Umilator does Harald now claim is his? As best I understand it, there's nothing left! Not even the "concept" part was reused.

It's just so damn funny, I should be pissed for the crap HF has caused, and the delays, the disruptive mailinglist posts, etc, but it's just so damned ridiculous I cant help laughing at it all.

[System]

Heh, this is just hilarious!!!!

I sincerely hope someone will give this twit some payback. Me?  I'm going to load up Kazaa-Lite, and start 'helping the community'  :python:

[platon42]

Well, Wayne, just as people get older, build up relationsships, get married, raise children etc, I guess it's at least once in a life time, that they get theatened by HF in a completely insane way. I reckon the best thing is to say, "Ah, another pointless attempt to get me annoyed and to steal some time of my life span, so why don't I just ignore it, be happy that I'm not that low and feel sorry for such people (but not too long)." (And I definately agree with Dammy).

The real pity about HF is, that he hasn't been able to leave the Amiga to make a living elsewhere. And the Amiga market is definately not a place to earn money for a living, and so things start getting desperate.

Let him claim whatever he wants, let him threaten you, I'm not aware he has ever sued somebody. He's only shooting himself in his foot all the time.

[Coder]

Hi,

What exactly can we not do anymore according mr Frank? Not talk about Amithlon?

Anyway, call me stupid but does he not realise that the people that "would" buy his stuff are the people here who are now on the edge of freaking out?

Coder