What's the status of the Cloanto / Hyperion lawsuit?

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by amigang

Well I agree, but if they just worked together, allowed the Vampire team to use AmigaOs3.1/Rom they likely could of got a small amount of money from licensed Amiga Roms to the Vampire Team and more importantly got free development work on AmigaOS3 and advanced the OS, instead you got a much improved 68K version of Aros, likely the last thing either company wanted. Which is why its so funny to me!

For AmigaOs 3.1 ROMs(!) and workbench disks(!), you do not need Hyperion at all. The 3.1 ROMs (!) are part of the CBM assets Cloanto bought, it's listed in the CBM liquidation.



The trouble is that you cannot develop from these disks or ROMs. What's missing in the asset list is the source code, and the development rights to work from them.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

This is not the settlement agreement. Your document is from 2007, but the settlement agreement is from December 2009.

Plus it's a 'ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION' with Amiga inc being the plaintiff...

[number6]

Originally Posted by TCD

Thanks for the links Gorf. So... the remaining case is about if Hyperion has the rights to develop and distribute OS 3.x too or if it is limited to OS 4+ if I understand the settlement correctly.

There's more to this than that. There is not enough time and space here to detail it all yet again, so I'll just post 1 simple example:

one of the suspension letters

Basically a number of things have been held up that even apply to 4.x and Amiga in general. Surely you all know Amigaone has nothing to do with 3.x, right?

If you don't understand that even Amiga as a brand re-ownership was also brought into question, look no further than the Intellivision response to the opposition filing made over "confusion" with Amico.

And yeah, there's more...

#6

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Here is the 2009 settlement agreement Thomas is referring to:
https://docs.justia.com/cases/federa...245/147/1.html

Hermans literal interpretation is contested by former Hyperion boss Carton, as we can read here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1ON-y...BVNxn_l9NNpNf/

This and other presumed/aledged breaches of this agreement are now part of the still ongoing lawsuit between Mike‘s Amiga Corp and Hyperion.

Gotta love how delusional they were thinking that AmigaOS3.1 could be used for IoT - it didn’t (and doesn’t yet to this day) even have a TCP/IP stack.

Anyway Carton’s testimony makes it clear cut that there is no room for interpretation. What we are seeing here is just legal shenanigans of the lowest sort on Herman’s part.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Gotta love how delusional they were thinking that AmigaOS3.1 could be used for IoT - it didn’t (and doesn’t yet to this day) even have a TCP/IP stack.

Despite having any means for securing the system against attacks. Yes, I also found this rather funny. Either they had no idea, or they showed a strange sense of humor.



Well, in a sense, it would nicely integrate into the "internet of shitty things" where vendors throw "something with IP, always online" into the market, and then stop caring about it.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Despite having any means for securing the system against attacks. Yes, I also found this rather funny. Either they had no idea, or they showed a strange sense of humor.



Well, in a sense, it would nicely integrate into the "internet of shitty things" where vendors throw "something with IP, always online" into the market, and then stop caring about it.

I guess their idea was just to try to throw around big trendy words to lure some less-than-knowledgeable large-company-manager and license for a few millions something that would only be used for a single product then replaced with something more modern after the product is launched and its limitations are made apparent.

Something which still happens to this day more often than not in the IT field.

[grond]

I guess they were hoping to find some investor money to burn on big salaries to themselves while supposedly working on making AmigaOS an IoT-operating system. I wonder what their explanation would have been why anyone would want to use AmigaOS instead of Linux for that sort of thing. Boots with just 512KB of RAM?

I remember that all this set-top-box stuff and aminoOS (or what was it called?) blabla started some time in the late 90s when I was still listening with half an ear. I always wondered what they were thinking (or smoking).

[TCD]

Originally Posted by number6

There's more to this than that.

Yeah, it does seem that way. It's quite hard to understand why the two companies can't figure something out after... a lot of years. I guess it 'grew historically' (i.e. it makes no sense) and trying to catch up with it now is pretty much a waste of time

[number6]

Originally Posted by TCD

Yeah, it does seem that way. It's quite hard to understand why the two companies can't figure something out after... a lot of years. I guess it 'grew historically' (i.e. it makes no sense) and trying to catch up with it now is pretty much a waste of time

What perhaps wasn't clear in what I mentioned is that anti-Amiga sentiment had spread to other communities as a result. And since we know that 3rd parties have instituted much of this, I just wanted people to know this extends well beyond our little niche here.

#6

[grond]

Quoting from page 3, section 1 (b) of the 2009 Settlement Agreement linked to above:

"Without prejudice to any Existing License Agreements ... the Amiga Parties hereby grant Hyperion an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide and royalty-free, transferable right and Object Code and Source Code license to the Software in order to use, develop, modify, commercialize, distribute and market the Software in any form ... on any medium ... through any means ... and for any current or future hardware platform."

I have a hard time understanding 68k Amigas built and sold by Commodore or Amiga Technologies as being a "current hardware platform" since they had long ceased to be produced at the point in time when the Settlement was made. Yet, AmigaOS 3.1.4 and 3.2 target this past hardware platform.

[Gorf]

I would interpret "current" not as "up to date", but as "in existence at this point in time".

As Carton pointed out: Hyperion wanted to be able to not only use PPC hardware, but x86, ARM (and refrigerators )

It is pretty clear: old Amiga Inc. gave really everything what we would understand as AmigaOS, no matter 3.x or 4.x or what hardware, in Hyperions hands - and Amiga was solely concentrating its efforts in the name "Amiga" and the completely new systems AmigaDE / AmigaAnywhere.

Mike's only realistic chance is to prove Hyperion violated this agreement by using the trademark "Amiga" (without OS or ONE) and/or trying to register trademarks not belonging to them or by going to court first and therefor terminate this agreement as whole ...

[grond]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I would interpret "current" not as "up to date", but as "in existence at this point in time".

As Carton pointed out: Hyperion wanted to be able to not only use PPC hardware, but x86, ARM (and refrigerators )

It is pretty clear: old Amiga Inc. gave really everything what we would understand as AmigaOS, no matter 3.x or 4.x or what hardware, in Hyperions hands - and Amiga was solely concentrating its efforts in the name "Amiga" and the completely new systems AmigaDE / AmigaAnywhere.

I don't think it is that clear. "Current" clearly has a temporal aspect to it and is very different from "in existence today". Moreover, the pairing with "future" makes clear that "past" was omitted from the list (and certainly on purpose). In addition to this the paragraph I quoted casually refers to the end of "marketing AmigaOS4" which may be interpreted as evidence that all this paragraph refers to was AmigaOS4 and beyond (and not back-again-and-then-sideways). Back then nobody saw a market for OS3 updates (to which all of us should be able to agree) and development of OS3 for "classic Amigas (without PPC accelerators)" simply was a non-issue nobody was even negotiating over. However, since this is the case, we can confer that AmigaOS3 wasn't subject of the agreement (other than for backward compatibility uses in AmigaOS4).

[TCD]

It's almost as if a judge would have to decide what 'current' means in this case

[grond]

Originally Posted by TCD

It's almost as if a judge would have to decide what 'current' means in this case

Just one correction: "...what 'current' meant in 2009 in this case".

[desiv]

I always look at these things like this...
Courts and judges are needed because contracts and agreements are almost always written poorly, and/or there are multiple "agreed upon" documents that contradict each other...

So, whenever someone finds something in a document that "proves" one side was right, they are probably not seeing the whole picture...
Otherwise it most likely would have been solved out of court...

Judges frequently don't decide which side is "right," but rather which site is allowed to argue their point and then which of the "poorly written" and conflicting parts should be allowed...

And yeah, that would include deciding what the word "current" meant to the parties at the time.. ;-)
It could be that it meant different things to each side and then the judge has to decide which definition (or a new one) makes the most sense.
But it is rarely as easy as "this phrase makes it obvious, case dismissed!"... Except on TV. ;-)

I just hope each side can come to a new agreement outside of further court cases...

[Gorf]

By the way:

What happened to AmigaDE / AmigaAnywhere?
This should now also be in Mike's portfolio and is not touched by the lawsuits. No?

Is there any chance to make this available as a free tool - in best case Open Source?
I dopt is has any commercial value left, but out would be interesting to study the inner workings - this TAOS/Intent stuff is still quite interesting IMHO

[number6]

Originally Posted by Gorf

By the why:

What happened to AmigaDE / AmigaAnywhere?
This should now also be in Mike's portfolio and is not touched by the lawsuits. No?

Is there any chance to make this available as a free tool - in best case Open Source?
I dopt is has any commercial value left, but out would be interesting to study the inner workings - this TAOS/Intent stuff is still quite interesting IMHO

decent history constructed here that connects some of the names
The word "convoluted" springs to mind here.
btw-Writer's Group Film Corp. who later changed their name to WRIT Media Group still trades on the penny stock exchange. I only mention that because AmigaGamesInc. in the above link is part of WRIT.

#6

[Rob1]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Ben Hermans is (was? IIRC he was disbarred?) a lawyer and it shows in his techniques.

Word on the forums was that he was fired by Monard Law. He is now a partner at Artes.


https://www.artes.law/who-we-are/ben-hermans/

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Gorf

What happened to AmigaDE / AmigaAnywhere?
This TAOS/Intent stuff is still quite interesting IMHO

Probably nothing. I still have the book and the CD somewhere.... If you ask me, it was another "me,too!" product at the peak of the Java hype. It was based on a virtual machine, same as java, but the VM had registers and wasn't stack based. I did not understand what the unique selling point of this idea actually should have been.

[number6]

Originally Posted by Rob1

Word on the forums was that he was fired by Monard Law. He is now a partner at Artes.


https://www.artes.law/who-we-are/ben-hermans/

Both Ben and Nele (founder Artes Law) had been planning to move on from Monard Law for some time.

some of the facts

Note my mention of "friction" as well. Monard Law had assisted Ben with his Hyperion activities and now Nele at Artes is even on record as the entity who surrendered the "Amiga Forever" euipo claim for Ben.
So there -was- history (and still IS) of people within these firms assisting Ben. Those who claim it has gone beyond obvious in house friendships, however, took this story to a different level.

#6