US Company Buys Commodore Brand For $33 Million

inKubus writes "Tulip Computers International BV -- which has held the rights to Commodore since 1997 -- said Thursday it will sell the once-mighty Commodore computer brand to U.S.-based Yeahronimo Media Ventures Inc. for 24 million euros, or $33 million. A company spokesman said they would "take actions" against possible copyright infringements of the Commodore name in the United States as well as release a new MP3 player and rerelease classic games."

Comments

This is one of the reasons...

[slakdrgn]

...abandonware isn't really abandonware. Now, I'm wondering if they bought the name just so they could make money out of lawsuits. If they do, and it works, I wonder how many other companies will attempt to by rights to long and outdated software just to attempt to raise their bottom line by sueing everyone.

Re:This is one of the reasons...

[Schnapple]

Thing is, when people pine for the Commodore 64 they're either nostalgic over the ancient implementations of things like word processors or databases, or nostalgic over games.

No one is still insisting that Paperclip was better than Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Write (though I'm sure a few will as soon as I hit "submit"), so apps are out.

As for games, people still love old C64 games. That Joystick on QVC with the games on it is selling enough to have its own hacking community and people are still psycho about games like M.U.L.E. (my Wife wants me to get one of those joysticks and hack Caveman Ughlympics on it - I'd prefer Fort Apocalypse myself).

Thing is, Commodore themselves didn't write many games. M.U.L.E. was Electronic Arts of all things, Fort Apocalypse was Synapse Software (long dead of course).

Just buying out the "Commodore" name won't allow them to sue abandonware sites. There *might* be something they can do to emulator authors, but that's doubtful.

They bought the "Commodore" name since it's still a powerful brand in people's minds. They'll see Commodore MP3 players and Commodore 64 joysticks in stores and think "wow, Commodore is still around..." Look at the sheer number of people who think Atari is the same company with the same people. Heck, when I was working at Babbage's in 1999 when Hasbro had the new games under the Atari name (Windows CD-ROM's) I had people come up to me and ask if they "needed their old Atari" to play these games.

Wow,

[Megaweapon]

a 6502-based MP3 player! (Or is that 6210?) Whichever, the "Commodore name" to most people isn't a modern-centric concept. It's a historical relic (an important one, sure, but has no basis in modern computing).