On another thread, some community spirit minded member was offering to supply standard PC mice with a little boing ball sticker on them.

Hyperion posted to the thread warning the member that the rodent almost certainly broke Amiga Inc trademarks and that their lawyers are still very active. they mentioned Cloanto for example.

I find it astounding that a company who scammed thousands of us with dodgy coupons and scammed a whole town in the US, a company who pretended to partner with hardware partners (Ack!) to fool a court judge, a company that can't even put up a web site, a company who played legal entity shell games to escape court orders (Peck).......

I could go on and on and on

I find it hard to believe that such a company has 'lawyers that are active' protecting trademarks that in the light of the missing source code for AmigaOS was even theirs to begin with.

Has anyone else felt the cold, clammy hand of an Amiga Inc lawyer or is this hyperion being paranoid?

@Colin_Camper

As you can see times of Amiga Inc. are returning only other issue now.
But it could have been expected.
Question of who will be next ?

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@Colin_Camper

You can expect lawyers (eg Ben Hermans) to be paranoid about legal matters. But I wonder about the ownership of the Boing Ball image. The original BB first appeared as someone's artwork on the Boing! game/hack in the days of the A1000. It was not owned by Commodore, so I can't imagine how Amiga Inc could have obtained ownership of it. IIRC Amiga Inc tried to patent it some years ago, but the application was turned down. I could be wrong about that.

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@Colin_Camper

There was (is) some trademark dispute against commodoreusa (one of ther products is named "Amigo") and dispute (you mentioned) with Cloanto ("Workbench" trademark, currently in mediation).

Last edited by pavlor on 29-Jul-2010 at 02:11 PM.

@Colin_Camper

Quote:

I find it astounding that a company who scammed thousands of us with dodgy coupons and scammed a whole town in the US, a company who pretended to partner with hardware partners (Ack!) to fool a court judge, a company that can't even put up a web site, a company who played legal entity shell games to escape court orders (Peck).......

Whatever. It is irrelevant - as long as the original copyright is still theirs, they are free to sue everyone who might or might not break their rights. *I* - as a private person - would not dare to proof them wrong. BTW: Indeed I heard that A Inc. is still active in regards of defending whatever they think what's theirs.

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Last edited by kudlaty on 27-Oct-2014 at 02:36 PM.

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@tonyw
Quote:

It was not owned by Commodore, so I can't imagine how Amiga Inc could have obtained ownership of it.

I'm not sure this is really the truth:

Commodore Deutschland F&E (Braunschweig) had indeed fully industrial produced BoingBall logos for their machines, but I'm rather sure this were never sold "to the wild". After the big Commo crash some batches were sold by german ex-Commodore employees. I.e. I had the offer for a nice Amiga3000T with this logo batch on it - but I didn't had the money ... *sigh*

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@Colin_Camper

The "sandard PC mice with a little boing ball sticker on them." would be the "official" ones AmigaKit are planning to sell.

The mice that would have been ordered through a1k.org are some customized advertizing gimmink, and would have featured a boingball floating in a transparent casing, the name "Amiga" under transperent plastic (in the old HiTorro-font) plus "1985" and "2010" to mark 25 years of Amiga. The rest of the case would have been red.

There have allready been 2 production runs without 1985/2010, 1st with blue case later in red.

Those mice might be rather lowend quality wise (but not really bad at all) but I must say they offer sufficent value for the money paid (and that would still be true if the were just bog-standard unicolor=.

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@Colin_Camper

Does AInc. even have any resource left? This is a company that - aside from the coupons - has had next to no income - ever - so who in their right mind would continue to fund it to make legal claims at this late stage?

We cannot knock Hyperion for trying to warn people though.

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@Colin_Camper
Was some guy who posted a video on youtube showing his a1200 running a modified kickstart a few years ago. I believe the guy basically copied his legally owned software kickstart in OS3.5/3.9 onto a physical kickstart rom just to show that it could be done.
Soon after he of course got threats from their lawyers.

@kudlaty

Quote:

It's not only the Boingball

I don't think the boingball has anything to do with this.

Quote:

Actually, A-EON dosent own the rights to any of the "Amiga" names or trademarks. These are still owned by Amiga Inc although under the settlement agreement Hyperion Entertainment have rights to sublicence to other parties. eg AmigaOne, AmigaOS, Boing Ball etc, etc This does not include the word "Amiga" by itself though. Obviously A-EON does own all rights to the A1-X1000 brand. TrevorD

If intent is to use the boingball, the above would indicate that one should write to Hyperion with your request/proposal.

#6

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@number6

Or they could contact Amiga.Inc...

@pavlor

Quote:

Or they could contact Amiga.Inc..

I understand your thinking here. The settlement says Hyperion "have rights to sublicence", but does not say Amiga Inc. does not have the right to give a direct license.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.

#6

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Last edited by kudlaty on 27-Oct-2014 at 02:35 PM.

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@number6

Quote:

Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Hyperion has exclusive licence only for Amiga OS, AmigaOS, Amiga One and AmigaOne names. Licence for Boing Ball is not exlusive, thus Amiga.Inc can use Boing Ball and also licence it.

@kudlaty

Quote:

I watched the first three episodes of The Prisoner yesterday, yay! :)

good stuff.

Oh, and despite what I posted, I also agree with what you said. After all, this is a company who has shown little regard for wasting the courts' time, when it comes to filing lawsuits.
See Amiga Inc. vs Garry Hare. heh.

#6

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The old HiToro Amiga logo has not been used for more than 25 years, I doubt that there is a registered trademark on that logo. But there is a registered trademark on "Amiga" for computers and computer assecories. The swimming ball was not a proper "Boing-ball", but it was looking very similar. As "Amiga_4000", the person who organised the order of the mice, lives in Germany, it is German law counting. In Germany we have a silly law called "Abmahnung" (protective notice). Originally it was created to avoid expensive law-suits, but it is very widely abused by unscrupulous lawyers (well, that is like "cold ice" or "hot fire...") to make some easy money: Smallest infringements of trademarks or small mistakes in the "General Terms and Conditions" of your websitewill lead to such a protective notice, where you are informed about your mistake, and if you will continue you will be sued, blablabla. That is not the problem, you have that, too, in any other countries of the world. But in Germany you will get together with that protective notice an invoice, a high invoice. If you don't agree, you have to go to the court. (And you are nearly never sure that you will win!) And than it will become really expensive. So that leaves us two possibilities: to emigrate or to let it be.
As long as I have a good paid job, I'm not not going to emigrate...
If somebody wants to organise to order the mouse: feel free. Look here for example: http://www.premo-promos.com/products/misc/aqua-mouse-liquid-mouse.php There are hundreds of small companies in Shenzen or Taiwan waiting for you.

Last edited by DrZarkov on 29-Jul-2010 at 03:22 PM.

@-Sam-

Quote:

-Sam- wrote: @Colin_Camper Does AInc. even have any resource left? This is a company that - aside from the coupons - has had next to no income - ever - so who in their right mind would continue to fund it to make legal claims at this late stage?

Surely Amiga had income from license fees. For example Cloanto.
There is also the Amiga Classix by Magnussoft, but I don't know if they paid any license fees to Amiga.

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@drHirudo

Quote:

Surely Amiga had income from license fees. For example Cloanto.

Ben Hermans referring to legal activity regarding AI vs Cloanto posted July 28,2010:

Quote:

And yes, they are still very active indeed. Just ask Cloanto.

One can only speculate they are trying to either (1)renegotiate or (2)prevent product distribution from Cloanto. I have no idea which.

Either way, sounds like this isn't a very positive business relationship, no?

Edit added: The only information posted on AW concerning this topic (and undisputed by anyone else) was:
Quote:

Amiga Inc. has opposed the "Amiga Forever" trademark deposed by Cloanto.

#6

Last edited by number6 on 29-Jul-2010 at 05:50 PM.

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@Kronos

Quote:

The mice that would have been ordered through a1k.org are some customized advertizing gimmink, and would have featured a boingball floating in a transparent casing, the name "Amiga" under transperent plastic (in the old HiTorro-font) plus "1985" and "2010" to mark 25 years of Amiga.

You are right, of course! bty I quite like those mice!

the Cloanto thing is mighty strange - Amiga Inc have been licensing cloanto for years with 'Amiga Forever' - I can't see how they could win a case now. It sounds like they just demanded an unreasonable amount of money or claimed Cloanto were lying about sales volumes.

After all, they pulled the same stunt with Eyetech.