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Amiga Dealers Suing Amiga Inc./Gateway
cluke writes "The Amiga Dealer's Association are suing Gateway and Amiga Inc. over breach of promise. It seems they're not too happy about being strung along for so long by Gateway. " Suing to the tune of somewhere around three million dollars US, but the web page points out something - the ADA is suing Amiga, Inc. Amiga, Inc has no money, and GW2k [?] is protected from damages legally. The full text of the filing, with commentary is online for the reading.
ii. Amiga will establish a claims fund in the amount of $3,902,500 for the purpose of reimbursing anyone who had to make out-of-warranty repairs due to a previously used part being included in an Amiga computer sold as new. For any claim in excess of $100, Amiga may require such additional information as it believes appropriate, including documentation that the claimed damage or repair was necessary due to the presence of a previously used part that was reinstalled in the computer. If claims exceed or are expected to exceed $3,902,500, the claims fund will be apportioned among claimants in a manner to be determined by the Court. Any unclaimed balance in the claims fund after one year will be returned to Amiga, except as follows: any amounts up to $100,000 will be donated to public schools or charitable organizations as chosen by Class Counsel (with Amiga's approval, which shall not be unreasonably withheld) and approved by the Court for the purchase of computer hardware and/or software, or, at Amiga's option, Amiga will instead donate an equivalent amount (up to $100,000) worth of computer hardware and/or software (valued at wholesale prices) etc etc.
So who wins here? Amiga certainly doesn't lose. They manufactured computers with used parts fraudulently advertised as new. In court, they probably would have been required to pay punitive damages as well, but here they pay only the actual cost of repairs, and anyone who has a repair claim over $100 has to prove that the damage was due to a used part. Any amount that is left over after a year Amiga gets to keep, and they under no circumstances have to pay more than the $3.9M in the fund. There is the $100,000 donation bit, but they don't have to pay that in cash; rather they can choose to unload some of their old Amiga inventory sitting around gathering dust. So Amiga wins in the respect that they have to pay significantly less than they may very well have been forced to otherwise.
But who are the real winners? Well, reading on a bit in the settlement:
As part of this Settlement, Amiga has also agreed to pay all costs of notice and administration of this Settlement, as well as attorneys' fees and reimbursement of expenses to Class Counsel in the aggregate amount of $964,000, subject to Court approval.
So as you can see, the real winners are the lawyers for the Amiga dealers, who get paid nearly $1,000,000 for negotiating a settlement which clearly favors Amiga, Inc!
The irony of the name has never escaped me. I have friends who break their Amiga boxes out of the closet every couple of years, network them, upgrade them, drop them into Bodega Bay boxes ("Oh, look, now it looks like an XT, not just a c-128...), and do everything in their power to make the box viable. Which, I realize, it is in many situations.
:]
But really, it translates loosely as "girl friend," and it just seems that noone is willing to let go....
The real irony would be if Amiga was really about to release a new system based on the infamous super-secret Transmeta chip and they were prevented from doing so because the ADA knocked them out of business before they could go into actual production.
...I think it's about time the Amiga was put to bed for good. Sorry, guys.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I see the reason for suing, when it came down to the wire Gateway showed absolutely no spine whatsoever and a number of other companies were hung out to dry.
While I was completely amazed by the announcements that they were dropping the hardware, it was amazement at Gateway for being so spineless, it wasn't amazement at Amigas not coming to market.
I know that there are some hardcore Amiga fans out there that are going to be pissed about this, but really, if you ever needed a sign that it's time to move on, this would be it.
Filing for bankruptcy doesn't nullify all your debts. If Amiga is successfuly sued and they don't have the cash they can file for bankruptcy. In this event all the intellectual property and physical assets will be sold and the money generated used to pay debts off according to some scheme agreed upon in court.
From the tone of the linked article the author seems to feel that this lawsuit jeapordizes the future of the Amiga. From the various news items on the Amiga this past summer its pretty clear that Amiga doesn't intend to build a device called the Amiga that Amiga owners would want to buy. Hence the lawsuit. Perhaps the patents would be bought by somebody willing to actually do something interesting with them. In other words the probability of a new Amiga being built goes from vanishingly small to... vanishingly small.
Maybe the best thing that would come out of bankruptcy would be for some third party to buy the source code to the Amiga and declare it Open Source. There would be no new hardware but some of the concepts might be preserved.
Spinning off the "offending" division doesn't absolve a company of it's liability in many cases- GW2K's still liable for the breach since it was performed while they were running it officially.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Upon reading paragraph A of the actual legal text, it appears that Amiga Intl. and/or Gateway sold computers and/or computer parts directly to customers. Said computers/parts were covered under an agreement with the Amiga Dealers Association that stated that only the ADA could sell them to customers. This makes sense, since dealers lose money if the manufacturer sells product directly.
The legal text goes on to say that both parties have discussed the matter and have come to a mutually agreeable settlement of $3 million. This money will probably come from the sale(s) that Gateway/Amiga Intl. made that violated the dealers' agreement.
"This just in: The Amiga is still dead."
I feel like we're on a death watch now, ever since the early '90s. The patient rallied briefly and was going to get a hardware transplant, but the doctors decided not to perform the surgery - now the patient is back on the death watch. Bummer.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I think that Mark Tierno's outcome of this is a little far-fetched. I don't think Amiga will ever totally die, there's too large to a community for that to happen.
While I'm not a layer, it looks as if Gateway/Amiga and the ADA have already reached a settlement. This filing seems to only state the broken laws, define the terms of the settlement and set a date for court approval.
The argument is over Amiga's use of used parts in new computers without saying so, similar to Packard Bell a few years ago. This of course breaks a host of trade laws and treaties. It does not appear to have anything to do with a breach of promise. Furthermore, it is interesting that Gateway has not denied liability. Perhaps they really don't want to see Amiga Corp. to die? Another point... the ADA is suing that 3.9 million be put into a fund 'for the purpose of reimbursing anyone who had to make out-of-warranty repairs due to a previously used part being included in an Amiga computer sold as new.'
Section C of the filing:
'Gateway, Amiga Inc. and Amiga International Inc. have NOT denied, and continue to accept, all liability with respect to any and all of the facts or claims alleged in the Complaint, they do NOT deny that they engaged in any wrongdoing, they do not deny that they improperly concealed any assembly practices with regard to end user product returns, they do not deny that they disseminated any false or misleading information or made any misrepresentations, they do not deny that they acted improperly in any way, and they do NOT deny any liability to Plaintiffs), any Settlement Class members or any third party. Amiga Inc, Amiga International has weighed the risks and potential costs of litigation of this action against the benefits of the proposed Settlement. Gateway has also weighed the risks and potential costs of litigation of this action against the benefits of the proposed Settlement. And as of this day at www.Amiga.com and www.amiga.de website's public statements to these truths are still posted as Gateway's and Amiga's pass failures and continued deceptive and miss leading advertising of A1200 Amiga Computers and the A4000 tower Amiga Computers as being their current models offered for immediate sale.'
Like I said, I am not a lawyer. I would appreciate any feedback as to how I interpreted this.
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Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
(*) OT: FreeSpeech 2000 has one really cool feature not found on NaturallySpeaking or IBM ViaVoice: it supports US English, UK English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian out of the box (since I'm learning French, I figure if the PC can understand what I'm saying, I must be pronouncing it okay!), and the price was not bad ($68 from onsale.com). Unfortunately, it's not "free speech" or "free beer". However, if you're looking for voice recognition for Linux, go to www.ibm.com and search for their ViaVoice SDK for Linux which is "free beer", which I have unfortunately not had time to check out.
--
Jake
Everybody talks about putting the AmigaOs under GPL. Well, some people are trying to do something which could lead to this. It is called "Amiga Research project".
:-) "
They are rewriting all the OS from scratch in order to make a cross-platform OS with the Amiga look and feel. I haven't looked at their homepage for a long time but they seem to still be sure of what they do.
For example:
" [Reaction when someone says that] AROS won't make it.
Yeah, we hear that all the day from every person. But most of them either don't know what we are doing or they think the Amiga is already dead. After we explained what we do to the former, most agreed that it is possible. The latter make more problems. Well, is Amiga dead right now ? I really can't say. Just a few hints: Did your A500 or A4000 blew up when C= went bankrupt ? Or when AT did ?
Fact is that there is only few new software for the Amiga (although Aminet has never seen better times) and that hardware is also developed at a lower speed (but the most amazing gadgets appear right now). I say, the Amiga community (which is still there) just sits and waits. And if someone releases something which is a bit like the Amiga back in 1984, then that machine will boom again. And who knows, maybe you will get a CD along with the machine labeled "AROS"
See http://www.aros.org for more informations.
There is a good summary up on The Register
Basically the lawsuite is about the fact that Gateway/Amiga sold Amiga computers and claimed that they were 'New'. Meaning that they have been sitting on the shelf for years and were never actually sold. In fact the units they sold were built out of used/returned parts.
The vendors ended up fixing these units because they thought they were new. They have now grouped together to sue Gateway/Amiga to try and recover the costs for their customers who spent the money to have machines, that should have been new-ish, fixed.
Krafter