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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."
Last night, I posted, and got flamed to a crisp for supporting Infinium Labs. People were posting my "Home Address" by looking at a review from 2000 and looking in the area for the name in my email address (BTW, way to go on noticing the date. You got the area of Maryland a little bit off because of that.). I know Infinium is a laughing stock among the Slashdot crowd, but here is what I have to say.
I think this has gone a little bit too far. HardOCP posted an article that was quite misleading. I don't think they they maliciously *lied*, but definitely misled it's readers. I personnally don't feel it warrants a Libel case, however, it goes without saying: I am not a lawyer! 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. 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.
Additionally, I don't see how hard it is to believe in the Phantom's existence. It's just a small form factor PC tied to a VPN which is the only way to purchase games. Yes, it has VERY powerful DRM, and is Microsoft's TCPA wet-dream. If the back-end didn't come together, Infinium could still make a killing selling complete systems that compete in price with the Shuttle barebones kits. It's standard PC hardware, with a few custom add-ons to integrate the hardware&softwaresides of the DRM scheme.
[Disclaimer: Views expressed are my own and not necessarily representative of those of Infinium Labs]
A little quick googling on the term Storm &Hemingway reveals that the law firms primary business is usually on the plantiff's side of copyright and trademark disputes... they're the guys who go after those who are infringing.
/. friendly position too...
Nice to see that they can take a
After all, failure to stand up to legal badgering is exactly WHY we're such a litigious society today - because of the payoff.
Coming soon to Slashdot: meta-meta-moderation!
>> Slashdot has now become... Grokdot! (er... well we could make it Slashlaw, but...)
/? and /! don't look quite right.
SlashGrok would be better. I'm not sure what symbols you would use to represent it, though, both
As SCO has shown us, when you can't make money by producing useful products, you can always make money by suing people.
The article that Inifium is annoyed at is over a year old now. Wasn't Infium's Phantom supposed to have already hit the market by now?
If anything, HardOCP's article should act as a warning to investors that infinium is just a scam.
>> New section for this website: lawsuits
Graphic suggestion: Justitia (Lady Justice) as a Borg. I suggest a cute one like Seven of Nine, robe optional.
Well-researched? HardOCP admitted that there were a few mistakes in their first article.
I can't think of a better way to increase readership than what Hardocp is doing. I doubt seriously there's any risk. Hell I should start a web site and sue SCO, I bet I'd be in the top 10 most read within days.
Now, as I understand libel, for the case to stand, two things need to be proven. First, the accused deliberately lied. Second, the accuser needs proof that they were damaged by said lies. Now, the first is hard enough to prove. I, personally, don't think HardOCP set out to mislead and lie in their article, but I could see how that could be debated. However, I don't think Infinium Labs has an iota of a chance proving HardOCP's article, published five months ago, has hurt their company. Infinium Labs doesn't even have a product on the market yet, and, as someone else pointed out, type in "Phantom Console" into Google and you'll find several slams on the company.
If Infinium Labs doesn't get launch that it expects, they only have themselves and their sketchy business practices to blame. They are an enigma wrapped in a puzzle drizzled with secret sauce. They created the atmosphere for speculation...and people began to speculate.
Now, I'm not someone who plans on linking to my site with every post I make here, but, again, I am linking to the message that was posted on my forums yesterday. It is a copy of the e-mail sent to HardOCP, before HardOCP made it public.
I checked the e-mail of the poster, which began with "twcbinc". I Googled that and it led me to a user at the Console Gamer Network. The user's e-mail at the Network was timr@phantom.net. Now, this didn't mean much, but it was interesting. A mod on my boards also found the post odd and traced the IP to Infinium Labs.
Now, I'm not saying this is illegal, or even bad, but I think it's sketchy, to say the least...and I think acts like this pretty much destroy any libel case they may have. Infinium Labs is hurting themselves with every step they make...and I think any judge who looks at their tactics and history will see that. Here's the link to the post on my boards: http://www.lunabean.com/forums/index.php?showtopic =2428
But, seems like that's a pretty common phrase in the industry and has been so for years....
Hell, it's even used to refer to [H]ard|OCP's own RatPadz.
A poster above suggested a new section on Slashdot for lawsuits... I think that's a great idea. SCO's newsworthy lawsuits may be dying out finally, but Phantom might keep the section viable for a year by itself. Especially if that "Pre-Order" link starts working and consumers get suckered as well as investors, or if they decide to defend their *cough* "Intellectual Property" *cough* by suing half the gaming industry for trademark infringement.
Wonder if that's where they hope to make a profit?
I write code.
Dear Friends,
i da
When I first heard about Infinium I was curious myself, especially since it's hq is my hometown. After reading the original article, I too drove down to longboat key and saw the supposed "hq" which indeed fit the description in the article. Shortly thereafter, they did acquire some very nice rental space on main st. I haven't been in the building, but rent is definitely not cheap in this area.
The local paper has had a number of articles about Infinium and they might be of interest. You can find them at www.heraldtribune.com.
I too looked for info on the founder, and his own resume which I found published on the Internet did indeed make him seem like a shady, take your money and run type. The fact that he lives on Longboat Key where the median family income is $107,983 shows that he's done pretty well. [wikipedia] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longboat_Key%2C_Flor
I worked for Tim Roberts at GlobalStreams under BIG. I was the webmaster for the only company that was purchased (rather than being created out of thin air) by BIG.
My observation of the general business strategy that was followed at BIG could be summed up in one phrase: "Fake it 'til you make it." When we were working under the [BIG] umbrella, it was remarkable. At one point our company was instructed to hire people, not necessarily because we needed more people, but rather to increase headcount. They were still hiring until 1 or 2 weeks before BIG shut down.
The often-expressed doubts surrounding this company and it's product (the name is completely telling) I believe are well founded. Simply reading the Phantom FAQ and their product specs should be instant signs to any observant individual.
Step 1: Create website. (See their job postings for 3d renderers, Flash developers, etc...) Make it cool, fill it with the latest (OBVIOUS) buzzwords. DRM. Pay-per-play. Promise to deliver the cool dream application that might be possible.
Step 2: Try to [maybe] actually deliver a product. Image is everything here, gotta keep the investors happy and the money flowing.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Prof^H^H^H Take the money and spend it / run. Anyone who might think about investing in this company, or who even really hopes that what they say or sell might be worth spending some money on should do some research, due diligence and move on with their life.
I often had a hard time working in an atmosphere where it was more important to seem successful than to _BE_ successful.
BIG didn't work out. A lot of people quit perfectly good jobs to work with Tim and were pissed when it didn't work out. They spent a LOT of money. After that experience for some reason I REALLY wanted to work in an environment where, say for example, a real product was worked on to solve a real problem, that had real customers.
Ah, the bitch of the reputation economy. Hope I don't get sued for sharing my personal experience and opinions.
--
Gabriel
Serafini Studios
Something I noticed that raises doubts over how serious Infinium really is... If you look at the tech specs for the machine it specifies an nVidia chip for the graphics and the nVidia logo is displayed on the site but if you look at nVidia's press section there's no press release mentioning any kind of relationship with Infinium. Take a look at the kind of press releases they do make and you'll see that they announce pretty much any partnership, even pretty minor stuff. Seems that if they had some kind of agreement to supply Infinium with any significant number of chips they'd have made an announcement.
But surely that's a good point. Quoting the article:
In a press release soon to be made public, lawyers representing KB Networks (the Bennett-founded entity that owns HardOCP), refers to the suit as one based on a legal statue commonly referred to as the "Declaratory Judgment Act." HardOCP lawyers explain the act as one that "permits a person or entity being threatened with lawsuits from another party to force the issue to be decided, rather than having to operate under a cloud of uncertainty and intimidation."
Could linux users use the same approach to sue SCO for threating them too??
Maybe this will be the second coming of home entertainment, but until I see a dev machine with my own eyes (hey, I signed up as a developer over a year ago!) they are not worth my time.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
that the Phantom forums have been shut down for a while now? I guess *someone* saw this one coming and decided to conveniently tell the boss it'd be a good idea to "upgrade to a better forum software" as soon as possible.
---- Take the Space Quiz!