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.

Comments

Bankruptcy doesn't void debts

[substrate]

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.

badly written article

[emmons]

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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