Acer to acquire Gateway for $710m

Could this have any relevance or impact to Amiga?.If i remember well Gateway still owns Amiga patents, they only gave permission to Amiga inc to use them.Could Acer revoke the permission and put all Amiga related things in a drawer on warehouse like Access did with BeOS?.Could AmigaOS 4 end like Magnussoft Zeta?

Last edited by Fransexy on 27-Aug-2007 at 04:24 PM.

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@Fransexy

What you say is possible. But not all of the Amiga patents are still in effect and there is a legal limit to how long they can be renewed (I think.) Gateway may have had it coming though, and Acer knows how to get things done. Furthermore, as PowerPC chips adopt the AMD-style chip sockets, it will be much easier for interested third parties to make Amiga-compatible hardware. I predict that the Acer problem will be smaller than the Amiga, Inc. problem.

The AW news item says it all:

"This must mean that Acer now owns the Amiga patents.
I bet they don't even know they own them. "

@ironfist

Not unusual.
Remember seeing a comment from ABB's CEO when they bought the Finnish competitor Strömberg.
Something along this:
"OMG, they manufacture more commodities of different kind than we do"

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@Fransexy

And Gateway plan to acquire Packard Bell :) :)

Gateway to acquire PB

So.... Acer buy GW (that buy PB)!!!

@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

Samurai_Crow wrote: @Fransexy What you say is possible. But not all of the Amiga patents are still in effect and there is a legal limit to how long they can be renewed (I think.) Gateway may have had it coming though, and Acer knows how to get things done. Furthermore, as PowerPC chips adopt the AMD-style chip sockets, it will be much easier for interested third parties to make Amiga-compatible hardware. I predict that the Acer problem will be smaller than the Amiga, Inc. problem.

Maybe ACER can aquire Amigainc while they are at it

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@Darth_X

I said the same thing when I first heard about the buyout of Gateway. Hehe!

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@Fransexy

Lets hope they call in the patents and do something with them.
Oh here's to wishing!

Rude!

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Quote:

Maybe ACER can aquire Amigainc while they are at it

What for ?

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Amiga patents?? heh they prob will find them and laugh, or go down memory lane to the days of 2d platformers. Dont expect them to get all excited and roll out new Amiga's though, i'm sure they wouldn't spend the money on it.

@Fransexy

Quote:

Could this have any relevance or impact to Amiga?

To Amiga Inc. and therefore to "amigans", yes.

Quote:

If i remember well Gateway still owns Amiga patents, they only gave permission to Amiga inc to use them.

Yes. Unlimited use, but not for long, eh?

http://www.google.com/patents?q=amiga
I believe you can get some shorter lists by entering "amiga" and then 2nd name like "gateway" or "acer".

Time regarding expirations? It was mentioned on another website, for example, the OCS expired 2004/5 but AGA not until 2012. Still looking into this.

Very interesting topic Fransexy....very interesting.

#6

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@amigakid

Well I suppose you could see UAE springing up pre-installed on Acer computers along with a load of retro abandonware games. A cute little selling point for Acer laptops, that would be!

Or maybe they could manufacture Amiga joystics that plug directly into the TV and have retro games stored on them. Like the Sega Megadrive pads you see going for £20. Hell Amiga could be doing that right now...

@Pleng

Amiga could have been doing that years ago, but they're a bit slow on the uptake.

@all

An extremely interesting read (listen) in the Carl Sassenrath banquet speech from Amiwest 2006 (1:11 into the .ogg file).
He was asked whether he still had Amigas.
He answered basically what he used them for at that time.
He said the main motivator for turning them on is "lawyers", who contact him regarding what is known as "prior art in patent cases"
An example he noted was current 1/2 billion dollar lawsuit over patents involving Amiga technology. In that case, it was CDTV patent from 1993, proving an existing technology.
So..if you hear people saying the old patents have expired or are meaningless,
you might think about that.

#6

Last edited by number6 on 03-Sep-2007 at 07:50 PM.

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@number6

But if I remember correctly, he is mostly contacted to "smash" a patent of someone else with the proof of "prior art" done by Amiga/Commodore and he does it with his private little HW-Museum. So the Patents originally held by Commodore are not involved, which doesn't proof or disproove their current status.

Last edited by Sneaky on 03-Sep-2007 at 09:10 PM.

@Sneaky

Quote:

But if I remember correctly, he is mostly contacted to "smash" a patent of someone else with the proof of "prior art" done by Amiga/Commodore and he does it with his private little HW-Museum. So the Patents originally held by Commodore are not involved, which doesn't proof or disproove their current status.

Listening to the .ogg again today.
Carl said:
Quote:

It was published

etc.
Later he referred to the hardware museum in a separate section, but he clearly refers to something written here. The hardware museum he said was part of a patent firm, not his own.

Also interesting was his reference to:
Quote:

all of us that were engineers at amiga get those calls constantly from lawyers

#6

Last edited by number6 on 03-Sep-2007 at 09:28 PM.
Last edited by number6 on 03-Sep-2007 at 09:21 PM.

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@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

Samurai_Crow wrote: @Fransexy What you say is possible. But not all of the Amiga patents are still in effect and there is a legal limit to how long they can be renewed (I think.) Gateway may have had it coming though, and Acer knows how to get things done. Furthermore, as PowerPC chips adopt the AMD-style chip sockets, it will be much easier for interested third parties to make Amiga-compatible hardware. I predict that the Acer problem will be smaller than the Amiga, Inc. problem.

Of course it will, acer know actually know what they are doing.

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@Samurai_Crow

Furthermore, as PowerPC chips adopt the AMD-style chip sockets, it will be much easier for interested third parties to make Amiga-compatible hardware.

When the heck is that going to happen???

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@AmigaMac

Whenever someone with a PPC core puts it in an AMD-style chip, with the same peripheral controllers as AMD use on their chips.

Sorry, that wasn't very specific, was it? But at this point, it's just a matter of deciding to do it. They all have the technology (IBM, Freescale, AMCC, PA Semi), that is on-chip DDR2 controllers, hypertransport, pcie etc...

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@number6

Quote:

Listening to the .ogg again today. Carl said: Quote: Quote:It was published etc.

Aeh, sorry I don't get what you try to say here And I don't have the time to listen to the whole thing again.
My point was, if your diggin for Prior Art in order to cancel a granted Patent, you are searching for implementations and proof of implementations, not for prior granted Patents. And I'm pretty sure to remember Carl Sassenrath said it in a similar context.

Quote:

Later he referred to the hardware museum in a separate section, but he clearly refers to something written here. The hardware museum he said was part of a patent firm, not his own.

If I remember correctly the Patent-firms do mostly have such Museums for general Hardware. I was reffering to his personal Amiga and Commodore cellar stuff he somtimes pulls out. IMHO he doesn't call it a museum in that session.
So that got a little bit messed up, because I didn't remember that there was another part where he refers to the term "museum" Sorry for that.

Edit: spelling

Last edited by Sneaky on 04-Sep-2007 at 09:27 AM.