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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...
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]
New section for this website: lawsuits
...or does anyone else think of the organization from Robocop when they read "HardOCP?
Word has it that the Infinium console is going to be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever.
Well, that's one way to completely fail to keep legal costs down.
/me grabs a bag of popcorn and waits for the show...
...if they want to keep up with HardOCP. Maybe they can put their lawsuit in the form of a cartoon.
And in order to win, Infinitum Labs has to produce Phantom, that is all great, kicks major ass and generally proves all derogatory articles untrue. Case dismissed, gamers rejoice, console enters trade :)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
So apparently nobody's business model revolves around selling anything anymore, just suing the shit out of everything that makes them pissed off?
First SCO, now Infinium. They should merge and specialize in lawsuits.
Penny-Arcade attacked them over this (infinitum); the strip can be seen here. The CEO also states this to which Penny-Arcade responded with "So Tim thinks we did that comic strip to get more traffic driven to our site. That's a nice thought Tim but you're way off. You see unlike Infinium Labs and your doomed console, Penny Arcade is successful. How can I say this without sounding like an asshole? Penny Arcade has more readers in a given second than your site will ever have even if it were to sit and rot on the internet until time ends and the universe implodes. Hmmm, I guess I can't. Tim also says we called him to let him know it's all in fun. This again is bullshit. I don't care if he likes the comic or not. I've certainly never called the guy and I have no intention of doing so. Bottom line, the guy is a lying huckster. I guess he figured he could post that on his forum and we'd never see it. This proves he has no concept of how huge PA is. Penny Arcade isn't just a comic and a news post Tim, PA is a community and we have agents everywhere. Chances are they're watching you even now." These guys love to get into this kind of stuff.
The way it looked to me they weren't suing them, just asking for a declaratory judgement. I guess it's a kind of lawsuit, but it looked more like HardOCP just telling a judge "These people keep threatening to sue us and it's creating uncertainty. Could you just just decide, let's pretend they'd sued us over the stuff they're threatening to sue over, hypothetically then who would win?". I don't know. i don't really understand it.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
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!
Jimbo Jones: You let me down, man. Now I don't believe in nothing no more. I'm going to law school.
Homer: Noooo!
I think Infinium should be more worried about what the SPCA will have to say about this.
California Anti-SLAPP Project
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.
Doesn't your NDA prohibit you from talking about the product you are testing?
Wait, they found an address and someone to serve the papers to? Looks like Infinium Labs is making progress...
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?
Thier forums are "down for maintenance" I guess that makes sense, they must need the hard drive in that server for the Phantom unit they will demo at E3 coming up. Well I sure hope after E3 they put the forum drive back in thier server !
That Tim really does have to kill a dog to have an orgasm..
Ooooooh SCO.
You are so in the shit.
while sco {
wget -O
}
Shortly after this fiasco began, IL took their forums offline. One guy wrote he was a millionaire investor and wanted to tour IL so he could vouch for their credibility. Others questioned the lawsuit and asked specifically what was wrong with the HardOCP article. I don't think anyone ever got a meaningful reply. The former forums can be found at http://forum.phantom.net. All that is there now is a message that reads "We will be re-launching the forums soon. Down for maintainance, we are upgrading to new software and adding more features. Admin."
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??
Go away, Tim.
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!
I'm not going to post my play-by-play analysis, but suffice it to say, I agree with you about one thing. Anybody who's interested should indeed do their own research. (and have a few good laughs and amazed slaps of the forehead while they're at it)
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.
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!