amiga-news.de - Legal battle: Amiga Inc. resurrected from the dead

26.Oct.2018 Legal battle: Amiga Inc. resurrected from the dead
While responding in the legal battle against Cloanto, Hyperion didn't just take Cloanto to court but all of the so-called "Amiga parties" as well - i.e. all companies that are or used to be owners of the Amiga IP since 2000 and that are parties of the 2009 settlement agreement with Hyperion: Amino (formerly "Amiga Inc.", Washington), Itec LLC and Amiga Inc. (formerly "KMOS", Delaware).

Both Amino and Amiga Delaware had been listed as inactive or "void" in their state's corporate registries. Amiga Delaware had been neglecting all of their trademark registrations for years, resulting in the loss of many registered marks including the important 'Amiga' mark in the US - which ultimately resulted in the current litigation.

It seems that due to Hyperion's lawsuit, both companies got active again. Last week, Amino tried to stop distribution of AmigaOS 3.1.4 by sending a Cease and Desist to Hyperion's eCommerace partner. Earlier this year, for the first time in years, expiring trademark registrations had been renewed: The EU trademarks Amiga and powered by Amiga are still registered as active marks owned by Amiga Inc.

As the author of Amiga Documents is now reporting, Amiga Inc. Delware is now listed with a status of "Good Standing" again, in contrast to "void" which used to be their status until recently. An interesting detail in the two screenshots posted to Twitter (this kind of information is only available to paying users of Delaware's corporate registry): In 2017 Amiga, Inc. still had a tax debt of 540,000 USD, which seems to have been taken care of by now.

The activities of both companies are already affecting the situation, apparently. During the last few days, it was discovered that Hyperion didn't just change their eCommerce partner as a reaction to Amino's Cease and Desist - they also changed the copyright texts in AmigaOS 3.1.4: Where the Workbench 'About' dialog and the Kickstart screen used to say (Screenshot from a Youtube-Video) "Copyright 2018 Hyperion Entertainment. All Rights Reserved", it now states "Copyright 2018 Hyperion Entertainment CVBA. Developed under License".

Editor's note:

If somebody really made tax debts of half a million dollars go away, just to make Amiga Inc. capable of acting on its own again, that suggests there are parties working behind the scenes that are still quite interested in monetarizing the remaining IP still controlled by the company.

While Ben Hermans is using the news service of his business partner APC&TCP for one of his usual pithy statements, in which he explains that there's "very little room for doubt" that it's Cloanto who's behind the "administratively dissolved Amino's" Cease and Desist, we severely doubt that Cloanto's Mike Battilana would invest six digit sums into reactivating questionable US companies. (cg)

[News message: 26. Oct. 2018, 23:53] [Comments: 4 - 28. Oct. 2018, 07:19]
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