Amiga, Inc.

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

This article is about a former Amiga company. For other uses, see Amiga (disambiguation).

Amiga, Inc.
TypePublic
Industryvideo game industry 
Founded1996
HeadquartersIssaquah, Washington
Key people
Bill McEwen
ProductsXpedio tablets, Amiga Anywhere, AmigaOS 4

Early years

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] Amiga negotiated with Commodore International two weeks prior to the contract deadline of 30 June 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.

Dispute and settlement with Hyperion
See also: History of the AmigaOS 4 dispute

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 2007 Amiga, Inc. announced specs for a new line of Amiga computers: low end[9] and high models.[10] At the same time Amiga, Inc. sued Hyperion Entertainment, a company developing AmigaOS 4 for AmigaOne boards[11] for trademark infringement in the Washington Western District Court in Seattle, USA. The company claimed Hyperion was in breach of contract, citing trademark violation and copyright infringement concerning the development and marketing of AmigaOS 4.0.[12][13]

Also in 2007, Amiga, Inc. intended to become the naming-rights sponsor for a planned ice hockey arena in Kent, Washington, but failed to deliver a promised down payment.[14]

Pentti Kouri, Chairman of the Board and a primary source of capital for Amiga, Inc., died in 2009.[15]

On 20 September 2009 Amiga Inc and Hyperion Entertainment reached a 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).[16]

Licensing rights

In 2010 Commodore USA announced they acquired the rights to the Amiga name and relaunch Amiga branded desktops running AROS[17] and Linux, [18] which however Hyperion Entertainment promptly disputed,[19] on the basis of a 2009 settlement agreement between Hyperion and Amiga Inc. 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 dropped their AROS plans and announced 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.[20]

In 2011, Amiga Inc. licensed the brand name to Hong Kong based manufacturer IContain Systems, Ltd.[21]

In 2012, Amiga Inc. completed transfer of copyrights to Cloanto.[22][23]

Recent events

Amiga Inc. is in dispute with Hyperion due to the release of Workbench 3.1.4 by Hyperion.

On 1 February 2019, Amiga Inc. transferred all Amiga-related rights to C-A Acquisition Corporation owned by Mike Battilana (director of Cloanto, company behind the Amiga Forever emulation package),[24] later renamed to Amiga Corporation.[25]

See also

References
  1. http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/pdf/misc/atari-amiga-contract.pdf%5B%5D
  2. ATARI Corp. vs. Amiga Corporation, U.S. (Santa Clara, California Federal Court 6 March 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 27 November 2010
  4. "Atari sues over chips", Modesto Bee, Modesto, California, p. 19, 22 August 1984, retrieved 27 November 2010
  5. "COMPANY NEWS; Atari, Commodore Settle", The New York Times, New York, New York, 24 March 1987, retrieved 27 November 2010
  6. "Amino Development Buys Amiga Name, Inventory From Gateway". 31 December 1999. Archived from the original on 6 November 2010. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
  7. Bouma, Mike (8 October 2002). "A Closer Look at MorphOS on the PEGASOS". OSNews. Archived from the original on 1 September 2010. Retrieved 4 September 2010.
  8. "AmigaOne News : 20 Answers with Alan Redhouse of Eyetech". 6 June 2005. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
  9. "Amiga News". Amiga.com. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
  10. "Amiga News". Amiga.com. Archived from the original on 16 December 2007. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
  11. "Amiga Inc v. Hyperion VOF :: Justia Dockets & Filings". Dockets.justia.com. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
  12. "Amiga, Inc. sues Hyperion VOF". AmigaNet.net. 1 May 2007. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
  13. "Official statement on litigation with Amiga Inc". Hyperion-entertainment.biz. 1 May 2007. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
  14. 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 2 August 2007.
  15. "Amiga Inc.: Pentti Kouri died". Amiga-News.de. 2 January 2009. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  16. "Hyperion, Amiga, Inc. Reach Settlement, All Legal Issues Resolved". OSNews. 17 October 2009. Archived from the original on 19 October 2009. Retrieved 18 October 2009.
  17. "Commodore USA to relaunch Amiga brand with series of AROS desktops". Engadget. 31 August 2010. Archived from the original on 2 September 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
  18. "Commodore outs Linux-running Amiga Mini desktop". Archived from the original on 4 November 2010.
  19. "Commodore Gets Rights to Amiga, Hyperion Takes Legal Action". Retrieved 1 September 2010.
  20. "Introducing AMIGA Workbench 5.0". Commodore USA. 31 August 2010. Archived from the original on 23 December 2010. Retrieved 13 December 2010.
  21. "Press release on Amiga.com". Amiga Inc. 5 April 2011. Archived from the original on 7 October 2011. Retrieved 7 October 2011.
  22. "Cloanto". Amiga Documents. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  23. "Cloanto confirms transfers of Commodore/Amiga copyrights". amiga-news.de. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  24. "Legal dispute: Amiga Inc. transferred rights to Mike Battilana's Co. (Cloanto)". Amiga-News.de. 5 February 2019. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  25. "C-A Acquisition Corp. renamed to Amiga Corporation". Amiga-News.de. 15 July 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
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