amiga-news.de - Legal dispute: a Statement by Hyperion and an open letter from two developers

31.Dec.2017
(ANF) Legal dispute: a Statement by Hyperion and an open letter from two developers
At the end of 2016, Amiga Inc.'s US registration of the "Amiga" trademark expired, which ultimately led to Hyperion and Cloanto competing for various Amiga marks on two different continents. The conflict resulted in Cloanto suing Hyperion in the US for trademark infringement and copyright violations recently.

Hyperion now reacts to the lawsuit becoming public with a press release, expressing regret that Cloanto decided to go that way, forcing Hyperion to "once again redirect substantial resources away from development to litigation" and claiming to be "perplexed" by Cloantos litigation, given that the Italian Company distributed AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition "for many months". Hyperion states it still maintains that all their actions are covered by their settlement agreement with Amiga, Inc.

Meanwhile, Thomas 'Thor' Richter and Olaf 'Olsen' Barthel, who are working on a recently announced update to AmigaOS 3.1 on behalf of Hyperion, released an open letter addressing both parties. On behalf of "your fellow Amiga community", they're aksing both companies to rethink their strategies, since it does irreparable harm to their biggest assets - the enthusiastic Amiga fans:

Open Letter to Cloanto Italy SRL Udine,
and Hyperion Entertainment CVBA, Brussels

Fellow Amiga copyright owners and licence holders,

we recently became aware of another lawsuit concerning potential trademark and copyright violations between your two companies, and we are distressed to witness another round of legal action in the aftermath of the Amiga’s slow decline as a business. It is understood that both of you want to protect your assets and secure your corresponding business models, but at what cost?

May we invite you, however, to take a step back as we provide our analysis of what establishes your assets? While you may be certain that you have control over the Amiga trademarks, the AmigaOS source code, the ROM images and the contents of the Workbench disks, these assets only establish the respective legal and technical grounds on which you can run your businesses.

The reason why your companies are able to do Amiga-business is due to us, the users, the fans, the software and hardware developers and Amiga experts - the few who are still around and who keep driving the system, by buying your products, by developing software and hardware in our own spare time, by providing support in our spare time, and by keeping the community alive. Your products, copyrights and trademarks would be void if it were not for the countless people who support a product which, from a purely technical perspective, has long lost its shine and appeal.

We, the users, developers and fans, are also your customers. And as such, we are very concerned to witness how you invest time and effort into lawsuits, which would be much better spent on your users and your products. The market is still sufficiently diverse to support more than one company caring for the Amiga, but this would call for coexistance rather than a prolonged struggle for control. From the very beginning, “Amiga” stood for creativity and passion, but always in conjunction with both a wonderful machine and a fascinating operating system. These issues never had to be settled in court.

We kindly ask you to consider the ramifications of each party having just enough legal leverage to frustrate the other party’s means to conduct its Amiga-business. The resulting stalemate has repercussions beyond this legal stand-off. The goodwill and the passion which sustain the Amiga are not bottomless. We are weary of having to witness how the results of our efforts, the countless hours of spare time we devoted, are diverted into lawsuits rather than productive work.

We would ask of you to find the common ground which allows the both of you to do Amiga-business and not step on each other’s toes. You share more than what currently brings you into conflict, you certainly share the need for a sustainable Amiga market and the community which enables it.

Your fellow Amiga Community (cg) (Translation: cg)

[News message: 31. Dec. 2017, 18:24] [Comments: 6 - 04. Jan. 2018, 14:06]
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