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HardOCP Declares Win vs. Infinium Labs
Bill Bagel writes "Many of us have watched Infinium Labs' attempt to quash HardOCP's First Amendment right for the last year. HardOCP wrote this story on the Infinium Labs CEO, Tim Roberts, that was based on his own resume and some Google research. IL sued HardOCP, a home-based webpage business for $20M in Florida, and HardOCP fought back in a Federal Court in Texas for a declaratory judgment. HardOCP basically won when Infinium Labs finally gave up the fight citing great expenses involved in fighting the declaratory suit. The judge's order can be found here." The Cliff's Notes version can be found on WhereisPhantom.com.
Anyhow, congrats to Kyle & HardOCP.
WhereisPhatom.com should read WhereisPhantom.com, luckily it's correct in the link.
...the pockets of Infinium? Surely a "company" that's preparing to "release" a new "game system" should have enough "money" in the bank to fight a legal battle like this.
I wonder how long it'll be before IL throws in the towel completely... probably not until they milk every last bit of money from their investors.
:)
Have fun watching their stock flipflop over the next few weeks as the pump&dump crowd has fun with it.
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Who signed that order? I could have been anyone: Jesus The Christuuuuuuuu, Jed Clampetuuuuuuuu, Justin Timberlakeuuuuuuu? Who knows...?
NMG
Even when you win a decision, you still lose because you have to pay thousands to a lawyer for defense. Is it possible for HardOCP to countersue to recoup those fees?
Kudos to Kyle for standing up to the bullying tactics that seem to become more and more pervasive each year. Also, it is just absolutely astounding that IL would go after a site that caters news to a potential customer base easily in the tens of thousands for them. Guess they weren't planning on succeeding with their vaporous Phantom in the first place. ....unless it was to be the ultimate platform for the ultimate vapor-sequel, Duke Nukem....
...we can get a similar judgement with SCO.
Yes sir... 2005 is shaping up to be a GREAT year!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
What do you mean, nothing happened? Infinium has given up the attacks on HardOCP due to HardOCP not bowing down and taking it. That seems fairly significant to me in the context of this case.
As for the point you make about NVidia, it's specious at best. NVidia isn't necessarily "happy" to be on the same press release. Infinium released that and NVidia released nothing of its own to accompany it. It's not a partnership either. Infinium bought (or committed to buy) a lot of NVidia cards; therefore they are allowed to basically advertise NVidia's products for free.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
Can someone please explain to me why corporations are afforded constitutional rights? Was that really the intention of the framers? I was under the impression that rights were for individuals, not companies. Obviously, IANAL, so please correct me if I'm misguided.
Just another day in Paradise
If HardOCP countersues to recoup legal fees it will result in an infinite loop, since the countersuit itself will result in more legal fees that will need to be recouped with a countersuit.
Yeah I agree it's not a big deal. But HardOCP was also proving the point that Tim Roberts, is a con-artist. Remember Media Fusion anyone? The ability to send internet packets over the magnetic waves of the power lines? The guy that started Media Fusion, used advanced technical jargon, and his charsima, to make people invest in a technology that did not exist, but he sounded like he could do it, so investors invested. So all these poor people, heh, not really poor, but they get con'd into investing millions of dollars, for whatever reasons they are investing (more for own profit, of course) into someone, that is lieing straight to their face, and really just going to steal their money. It happens all the time. Con-artists are everywhere. But this guy Tim Roberts, sounds like he's not just con'n the investors, but the whole world, making us all believe in the PHANTOM (key word) gaming console. Of course, he might really be building one, or, he might be a con-artist. And all while this is happening, he's gonna get another 10 mill from some smhuck, and it's not going to Infinium Labs, but right to HIS backaccount. And there is nothing we can do about it. Question is, should we care. It's a moral issue. HardOCP see's it, and saw Tim Roberts, as a obvious target, someone who they could go after and get. Most con-artists, you can't really catch. But remember, this can all be smoke and mirrors, because if the Phantom gaming console does come out, then it's a different story all together.
Black Sky
2D Elite Inspired Game
Who signed that order? I could have been anyone: Jesus The Christuuuuuuuu, Jed Clampetuuuuuuuu, Justin Timberlakeuuuuuuu? Who knows...?
The Great Chtulhuuuuuuuuu knows...
You can't take the sky from me...
Don't you mean an Infinium Loop?
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Actually, this is the *original* suit. The countersuit in Florida was filed after the US District Court suit. Kyle was pre-emptive with his lawsuit so that Infinium Labs would stop threatning him with one.
They've already come up with this; considered by many to be the only redeeming idea or product IL has produced. And I believe IL has explicitly stated they won't distribute it without the unit.
Rather, the notion of corporate personhood got written into some other supreme court decision in the 1870's, by a former railroad executive who was working as a clerk at the Supreme Court. It wasn't part of the actual Court opinion but rather was part of the introduction or something like that, but regardless, later court decisions quoted it and it became binding law.
The Supreme Court in that era was very corrupt, even worse than now. The 14th amendment (resulting from the Civil War) spelled out a bunch of rights guaranteed to all "persons", i.e. all people (previously, only white people had rights). Corporations realized that they wanted to get in on the action and have those rights themselves, so after sufficient palm greasing, the decisions came down.
For more info, see the movie "The Corporation", which is really excellent.
See also: wikipedia on corporate personhood.
It wasn't Roomba, iBot, and XBox 8 all rolled up in one. It was a feature set that got a certain subset of the population excited while having the technical underpinnings to make it possible that it could see the light of day at a reasonable price point.
Call him a con-man or a snake oil salesman if you will, but give him some props for being able to identify the pavlovian triggers that have suckered investors into believing his concepts had merit over and over again. - Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
for putting publicly available but apparently embarassing information in a highly visible place.
Are they as irrelevent now as SCO will be after they lose their case? Yes. Do I still want to hear about it when it happens so I can laugh at them? Yes. Yes I do.
To Infinium Labs: Ha ha!
The enemies of Democracy are
This is what happens when you fight instead of caving into a bully. Mattel tries the same sort of thing, and they have been made to pay over $1M. The RIAA tried that with Professor Felton, they caved, and their defense to the declaratory judgment is that 'we didn't mean it, when we threatended'.
Fight Spammers!
"HardOCP basically won when Infinium Labs finally gave up the fight citing great expenses involved in fighting the declaratory suit"
Don't the people who submit the stories RTFA? I mean CRIPES. No, they didn't give up because of expenses, they gave up BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HAVE A CASE. RTFA! I mean GEEZ....
To wit:
"..does not constitute unfair competition under U.S.C 1125 or an unfair business practice, trade disparagement, trade libel, and tortious interference with contract under Texas law, and that plaintiffs' use of Infinium's trademarks from September 7 2003 through February 19,2004 in connection with the article does not constitute dilution or infringement of those marks or otherwise give rise to liability under federal or state law. Because defendants have ADMITTED (emphasis mine) that plaintiffs are entitled to declaratory relief, they move for judgement on the pleadings in favor of the plaintiffs pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. (Federal Rules for Civil Procedures) 12(c)."
I mean, c'mon...there's nothing about cost of litigation. It's all the Infinium being full of horse manure.
--
BMO
If you look at the yahoo link and show the past 1 year of trading you should see that the stock has split, TWICE! The first one was last Jan, a 5 for 1 split, and the second was May, a 4 for 1 split. And the stock has never gone over $2.50. So, even though the price is low, someone (hmmm, wonder who?) is sitting on 20x the stock they had last year. My guess is that after the next 'big announcement' about the product, someone will resign, then take the money and run.
Yeah, the first thing that leaped out at me was, "a *home-based business* beat out a sizable corporation by *costing the corporation too much*?" That's someone to remember.
Infinium Labs basically has no money for attorney's fees or anything else since the last I heard, they had failed to get any additional investor funding. So I think throwing in the towel on the lawsuit is part of their endgame strategy. Don't be surprised if this is soon followed by Chapter 7 Bankruptcy following CES. Unless they get more money real soon, they are DEAD and the show is over. I think whatever they show at CES is their last chance. Though I still wonder if success was ever even an option.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I agree about HardOCP, but regarding CEO's and good grammar ... actually, no, I wouldn't. It's a big problem in corporate America. The proper use of the English language, or even an understanding of why such usage is important, is gradually disappearing from the business world. I've found that is usually the big boss' secretary that knows how to write, and corrects any official correspondence he may spew forth. Emails, unfortunately, don't ordinarily come under such scrutiny, and more frequently resemble transmission line noise or encryted Swahili than good English.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.