The dispute..........
Four days after Amiga Inc announced the new Amiga OS4 (OS4) compatible machines, they sued Hyperion
Entertainment (Hyperion). Amiga Inc stated that it decided to produce a PowerPC version of AmigaOS in 2001
and on November 3, 2001, they signed a contract with Hyperion (then a game developer for the 68k Amiga platform
as well as Linux and Macintosh). Amiga Inc. gave Hyperion access to the sources of the last Commodore version,
AmigaOS 3.1, but access to the post-Commodore versions OS 3.5 and 3.9 had to be purchased from the third party
responsible for their development since Haage & Partner (developers of OS 3.5 and 3.9) never returned their AmigaOS
source code to Amiga Inc.
Amiga Inc. also said that its contract allowed Hyperion to use Amiga Trademarks in the promotion of OS4
on Eyetech's AmigaOne and stipulated that Hyperion should make its best efforts to deliver OS 4 by March 1, 2002,
a port of an elderly operating system ( 68000 ) for an entirely different processor architecture (PowerPC) in four months,
an optimistic target that Hyperion failed to meet. No surprise there. Software take months to test, beta test and final test.
According to Amiga Inc, the contract permits the purchase of the full sources of OS4 from Hyperion for USD$ 25,000.
The court filing says that Amiga Inc paid this sometime in April–May 2003, to keep Hyperion from going bankrupt, and
that between then and November 21, 2006, Amiga Inc paid another USD$ 7,200, then USD$ 8,850 more which it says
Hyperion said was owing.
Furthermore, in the filing, Amiga Inc., President Bill McEwen revealed that Amiga Inc still hasn't received the sources
for AmigaOS 4, that he's discovered that much of its development was outsourced to third-party contract developers
and that it is not clear if Hyperion has all the rights to this external work. Eventually, after five years and USD$ 41,050
on 21 November 2006, Amiga Inc told Hyperion it had violated the contract and gave it 30 days to sort it out,
eg: To finish the product and hand over the sources.
That didn't happen, so the contract was terminated on 20th December 2006. Hyperion claims in its defense that Amiga Inc
rendered the contract null through dealings with KMOS, a company which acquired the Amiga assets and renamed itself
Amiga Inc over 2004– 2005.
Four days later, on 24th December 2006, Hyperion released the final version of OS4 – although according to Amiga Inc,
Hyperion claims that this was merely an update of the developers' preview version of 16 April 2004. Since the contract
ended, Hyperion had no rights to use the name AmigaOS or any Amiga intellectual property, or to market OS4 or enter
into any agreements about it with anyone else. Nevertheless, AmigaOS 4 was still being developed and distributed.
Furthermore, ACube Systems released a series of Sam440ep motherboards, which run AmigaOS 4. Confusing ?
For a time, the case seemed deadlocked with neither side being apparently able to prove the point either way.
Without Amiga Inc's permission, Hyperion Entertainment could not use the AmigaOS name or related trademarks.
Hyperion's defense centered around the potentially contract-voiding nature of the Amiga Inc/KMOS handover, the
problems they faced in acquiring the post-Commodore OS 3.x source code which Amiga Inc claimed to own and
have access to, and the presence of new work and open components in the new operating system.
Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc finally reached settlement agreement after much negotiation and anguish.
So, who were the real winners here? The Lawyers who made a motza of $$$$$.
On 30 September 2009, Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc reached settlement agreement where Hyperion
was granted, "an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide right to AmigaOS 3.1 in order to use, develop, modify, commercialize,
distribute and market AmigaOS 4.x.
Hurray for logic, lawyers and Attorneys.
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