X10 Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

telstar writes "As a followup to the recent Slashdot story about X10 losing a $4.3 million patent infringement suit over pop-unders, X10, the wireless camera company that 'only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser', have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This allows them to continue to operate, but they'll be shielded from creditors while they reorganize their finances - so rest easy, X10 popups are here to stay."

Comments

X10 Popups are here to stay?

[easyfrag]

Now really, is there anyone who reads Slashdot that is still dealing with popups? Between builtin popup blockers in the Mozilla family, Safari, and Opera and the Google Toolbar in IE why would any self-respecting geek ever have to see an X10 ad?

Re:Sad for the brothers

[stomv]

Generally, the large creditors share the assets at approximately the percentage that they're owed.

So, I'd expect those brothers -- who are owed $4.5 mil or so to get $.1M - $4.5M ($.1M if $1M assets, $50M debt; $4.5M if $10M assets, $10M debts). Of course, if the company had exactly $10M of debts and $10M of assets, the CEO would kick in a penny and avoid bankruptcy... ;)

Of course, IANAA, IANAL, IANACFO.

Re:Shocked! Just shocked!

[ergo98]

Well it sounds like they didn't actually spend lots of money on the web advertising campaign - the lawsuit that triggered this bankruptcy was by a pop-under company suing x10 for unpaid bills (among other nonsense). In a strange way it's a karmic balance for x10 to go bankrupt depriving some pop-up "innovators" from getting their bounty.

Having said that, x10 was amazingly successful at their campaign - from a collection of fringe items by a company that no-one knew, to millions in sales and a company whose name we all know well. I also think it's a bit foolish to demonize x10- x10 didn't put ads on the sites you visit--The site put ads there (well, apart from gator but that was a prior story). If you don't like the pop-under ads at a site, blame the site itself not the people paying the bills.

I liked X10

[IGnatius T Foobar]

It will be a shame to see this company go. Seriously. So they used pop-up and pop-under advertising -- so what? Lots of companies do. At the end of the day, they still sold home automation gear at great prices. I hooked up my entire home using their products, didn't spend a lot, and it's wonderful to use. With the X10 company gone, I will have to turn to Lutron, Smarthome, or other more expensive makers of X10 gear.

Or we could all just upgrade from X10 to X11. I hear the upgrade lets you run graphical applications remotely. :)