Amiga, Inc.

Amiga, Inc.
Public
Founded 1996
Headquarters Issaquah, Washington
Key people
 Bill McEwen
Products Xpedio tablets, Amiga Anywhere, AmigaOS 4
Website www.amiga.com Edit this on Wikidata

Amiga, Inc. is a company that holds some trademarks and other assets associated with the Amiga personal computer (originally developed by Amiga Corporation).

History

In the early 1980s Jay Miner, along with other Atari, Inc. staffers, set up another chip-set project under a new company in Santa Clara, called Hi-Toro (later renamed to Amiga Corporation), where they could have some creative freedom. Atari, Inc.[1] went into contract with Amiga for licensed use of the chipset in a new high end game console and then later for use in a computer system.[2] $500,000 was advanced to Amiga to continue development of the chipset.[3] In a breach of contract Amiga negotiated with Commodore International two weeks prior to the contract deadline of June 30, 1984.[4] In August 1984, Atari Corporation, under Jack Tramiel, sued Amiga for breach of contract. The case was settled in 1987 in a closed settlement.[5] (See "Amiga Corporation".)

In 1994, Commodore filed for bankruptcy and its assets were purchased by Escom, a German PC manufacturer, who in turn went bankrupt in 1996. The Amiga brand was then sold to another PC manufacturer, Gateway 2000, which had announced grand plans for it. However, in 1999, Gateway sold Amiga to Amino Development[6] for almost 5 million dollars.[7] Gateway still retained ownership to all Amiga patents.

The owner of the trademark, Amiga Inc., licensed the rights to make hardware using the AmigaOne brand to a computer vendor based in the UK, Eyetech Group. However, due to poor sales Eyetech suffered substantial losses and ceased trading.[8] In 2010 Commodore USA claimed to have acquired rights to use the Amiga name on branded x86 Linux computers,[9] which however Hyperion Entertainment promptly disputed,[10] on the basis of a 2009 settlement agreement between Hyperion and Amiga Inc. The official domain amiga.com was dropped in October 2017.

Current

Amiga, Inc. holds some trademarks and other intellectual property related to the Amiga personal computer that was developed by Amiga Corporation and Commodore International.

Timeline of events:

2007-04-29:

  • Amiga, Inc. revealed specs for a new Amiga [11]

2007-04-30:

  • Amiga, Inc. sued Hyperion Entertainment [12] for trademark infringement in the Washington Western District Court in Seattle, USA. Amiga, Inc. sued Hyperion for breach of contract, trademark violation and copyright infringement concerning the development and marketing of AmigaOS 4.0.[13] Hyperion's official statement [14]

2007-05-07:

  • Amiga, Inc. revealed specs for a new high end Amiga [15]

2007-07-31:

  • Amiga, Inc. was dumped as the naming-rights sponsor for a planned hockey arena in Kent, Washington due to failure to deliver a promised down payment.[16]

2009-01-22:

  • Pentti Kouri, Chairman of the Board and a primary source of capital for Amiga, Inc., passes away.

2009-09-30:

Amiga Inc and Hyperion Entertainment reached settlement where Hyperion is granted an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide right to AmigaOS 3.1 in order to use, develop, modify, commercialize, distribute and market AmigaOS 4.x and subsequent versions of AmigaOS (including AmigaOS 5).[17]

2010-08-31:

  • Commodore USA announces they acquired the rights to the Amiga name and relaunch Amiga branded desktops running AROS.[18]

2010-12-13:

  • After legal threats from Hyperion due to conditions in the Amiga Inc. settlement that they are now subject to as an Amiga licensee, Commodore USA later drop their AROS plans and announce on their relaunched website, that they will create a new OS called AMIGA Workbench 5.0 (name changed to Commodore OS since Workbench was owned by Cloanto), which was later revealed will be based on Linux.[19]

2011:

  • Amiga Inc. licenses the brand name to Hong Kong based manufacturer IContain Systems, Ltd.[20]
  • Amiga Xpedio Tablets:
    • Amiga Xpedio 10 MT,
    • Amiga Xpedio 10 MTL,
    • Amiga Xpedio 8,
    • Amiga Xpedio 7 MT
  • Amiga All-In-One Computers:
    • Amiga Sentio BR,
    • Amiga Sentio RO,
    • Amiga Sentio KLT

2012:

  • Amiga Inc. completes transfer of copyrights to Cloanto[21][22]

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/pdf/misc/atari-amiga-contract.pdf%5Bpermanent+dead+link%5D
  2. ↑ ATARI Corp. vs. Amiga Corporation, U.S. (Santa Clara, California Federal Court March 6th, 1984 contract between Atari Inc. and Amiga Corp. included in evidence filings).
  3. ↑ Chira, Susan (29 August 1984), "Amiga's high-tech gamble", The New York Times, New York, New York, retrieved 2010-11-27
  4. ↑ "Atari sues over chips", Modesto Bee, Modesto, California, p. 19, 22 August 1984, retrieved 2010-11-27
  5. ↑ "COMPANY NEWS; Atari, Commodore Settle", The New York Times, New York, New York, 24 March 1987, retrieved 2010-11-27
  6. ↑ "Amino Development Buys Amiga Name, Inventory From Gateway". 1999-12-31. Archived from the original on 6 November 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-03.
  7. ↑ Bouma, Mike (2002-10-08). "A Closer Look at MorphOS on the PEGASOS". OSNews. Archived from the original on 1 September 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-04.
  8. ↑ "AmigaOne News : 20 Answers with Alan Redhouse of Eyetech". 2005-06-06. Retrieved 2010-09-03.
  9. ↑ "Commodore outs Linux-running Amiga Mini desktop". Archived from the original on 4 November 2010.
  10. ↑ "Commodore Gets Rights to Amiga, Hyperion Takes Legal Action". Retrieved 1 September 2010.
  11. ↑ "Amiga News". Amiga.com. Retrieved 2013-12-03.
  12. ↑ "Amiga Inc v. Hyperion VOF :: Justia Dockets & Filings". Dockets.justia.com. Retrieved 2013-12-03.
  13. ↑ "Amiga, Inc. sues Hyperion VOF". AmigaNet.net. 1 May 2007. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
  14. ↑ "Official statement on litigation with Amiga Inc". Hyperion-entertainment.biz. 2007-05-01. Retrieved 2013-12-03.
  15. ↑ "Amiga News". Amiga.com. Archived from the original on 16 December 2007. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
  16. ↑ Brunner, Jim (31 July 2007). "Amiga fails to deliver cash, loses naming rights to Kent arena". The Seattle Times Company. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-02.
  17. ↑ "Hyperion, Amiga, Inc. Reach Settlement, All Legal Issues Resolved". OSNews. 2009-10-17. Archived from the original on 19 October 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-18.
  18. ↑ "Commodore USA to relaunch Amiga brand with series of AROS desktops". Engadget. 2010-08-31. Archived from the original on 2 September 2010. Retrieved 2010-09-01.
  19. ↑ "Introducing AMIGA Workbench 5.0". Commodore USA. 31 August 2010. Archived from the original on 23 December 2010. Retrieved 13 December 2010.
  20. ↑ "Press release on Amiga.com". Amiga Inc. 2011-04-05. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
  21. ↑ "Cloanto". Amiga Documents. Retrieved 2015-02-20.
  22. ↑ "Cloanto confirms transfers of Commodore/Amiga copyrights". amiga-news.de. Retrieved 2015-02-20.
  • Amiga, Inc. Website (Archive.org, October 2017)
  • "Amiga licensee iContain". Archived from the original on 5 November 2011. Retrieved 2011-11-05.

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