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HardOCP Sues Infinium Over Legal Threats
Cebu writes "According to GameSpot, in a less than surprising move, Kyle Bennett of tech website HardOCP has decided to file a lawsuit against Infinium Labs, makers of the forthcoming Phantom PC-based 'console'. On February 27, a lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division under the Declaratory Judgment Act to force the issue of Infinium Labs' repeated legal threats against HardOCP for an allegedly defamatory article written last year."
Has /. become a place where the geeks talk law?
Stay tuned for new sig...
New section for this website: lawsuits
Well, that's one way to completely fail to keep legal costs down.
/me grabs a bag of popcorn and waits for the show...
HardOCP posted an article that was quite misleading. I don't think they they maliciously *lied*, but definitely misled it's readers.
On what points exactly do you feel that HardOCP misled their readers?
Infinium sent the letter saying that it didn't like the article and was going to sue, and then HardOCp decided to escalate by countersueing.
They didn't escalate, they just called Infinium's bluff. If I'm reading the news right, the legal action here concerns solely the matters that Infinium's original threats of legal action were based on. There is no escalation here at all, they've just moved the venue of discussion.
It's standard PC hardware, with a few custom add-ons to integrate the hardware&softwaresides of the DRM scheme.
I believe when people say the infinium doesn't exist they mean that the custom add-ons don't exist or do not have substance. I don't think anyone believes that Infinium doesn't have PC hardware.
However I also think most people who've looked closely at what Infinium is saying believe that in the screenshot Infinium distributed where there's the kid playing Quake 3 on a TV with a phantom sitting in front of it, that you're looking at any sort of actual product Infinium has or will have.
I agree that neither side is coming into the dispute with clean hands here. HardOCP's first edition of the article was not perfect, even they admited that there were several points that needed to be retracted. However, HardOCP handled their mistakes gracefully by retracting what they were proven wrong on.
Infinium thought they had weak prey, so they overreached and added a few threats that they wouldn't be able to follow through on either. They might have even been hoping that they could scare HardOCP into shutting down completely.
It's hard to run a news organization of any kind without at least having a laywer within reach. Whenever you say bad things about businesses, you'll eventually run into somebody who thinks thye have more lawyers than you can ever afford...
That said, while I am still quite scepticle of the whole thing, I have to admit I no longer think the console is just vaporware. Between the press demo they did a few months ago for a few select members of the press (which at least had photos of the thing), to fact that they will have an 8,000 square foot booth at E3 I think this might not be vaporware. It could still fail miserably and be nothing like they've promised, but at least they seem to be doing more than saying "we have a great console, we'll prove it later" like they did for so long.
The proof is in the pudding. Nintendo's DS, the Phantom, and more are going to be shown at E3. It should be very intersting.
And let's face it. Suing someone priting facts about you that don't look good more than a year after they were posted (and when you still haven't shown any real proof to anyone yet) just doesn't look good for your company.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I bet that HardOCP could have let the "lawsuit" slide and an out of court settlement would have happened, if anything. Now there WILL be a messy legal battle.
Well of course they could have settled on this attrocious claim. And that might perhaps be judged the reasonable thing to do, if concessions to outrageous litigiousness simply because it's litigious are to be the expectation of private bodies in our society. But as of now, many of us still value due process of law over concession to threat. And so be it, that due process of law take its course here.
I propose a reason for the decline of relevance of US: the amount of money used going for lawsuits (defending against bad claims and making those bad claims) vs. the amount of money that goes to new developing new ideas. so... basically, it's asshole businessmen and CEOs that see a better living from the civil law system than actually thinking themselves. Maybe if all this effort was refocused all these WELL TRAINED tech people would actually have a job. Time to expire ALL of tort law and begin again...
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Personally, I'm glad you got flamed; you deserve it if you spoke out against HardOCP in this issue. As an Internet journalist and writer I think it's of extreme importance that everyone recognize that HardOCP is in the right in this matter according to the facts as they have been presented, and that Infinium Labs was appallingly wrong for doing what they did.
While I think Infinium labs is wrong, I have to completely disagree with the idea that this guy deserved to be flamed. While you stand up for HardOCP's rights, you encourage people to shout down this guy if they disagree. Why encourage him to think about his position and state it eliquently if you are just going to shout him down when he does so? HE has every right to state his opinion just as HardOCP does. Just as you have every right to disagree. But flaming is not disagreeing, it is badgering, shouting down, and harassing without any intelligent thought. And that is the last thing anyone should be encouraging.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Yes, by retracting some ambiguous statements and replacing them with some quite specific statements that basically were even more annoying than the originals, and completely in line with what Infinium was demanding.
Notice how Infinium hasn't bothered to call Penny Arcade on their numerous articles on the Phantom. They probably know how big PA was and don't want to fuck with them. They probably had no clue about HardOCP and figured they'd be an easy target. Good guess, but wrong.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Imagine you are some non-tech-savvy investor, and all you know about Infiniujm Labs is what you see here. Not so bad, right? So I think the reason Infinium is so intent on protecting its image is because of this fragile bubble they have built around the stock.
Since among the many disputed statements in HARDOCP articles is whether the Phantom is vaporware, filing a suit is a great way to find out whether the thing actually exists. If Infinium challenges the statement that they don't really have a product, then they have to show that they do have a product and HARDOCP gets to see it.