While we’re all busy weeting ourselves or getting our knickers in twists over Apple’s iPad, we’d almost forget that this other company had already announced a similar product two months ago. Fusion Garage’s CEO has given a number of updates on the Joo Joo, while also filing its motion to dismiss the court case started by TechCrunch.
Let’s get the legal stuff out of the way first. Simply put, Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad project broke in two, and his partner, Fusion Garage, decided to go ahead with the project anyway – this time without Arrington. This caused quite the public falling out between the two, leading to Arrington filing a lawsuit against Fusion Garage, claiming “Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competitition and Violations of the Lanham Act”.
Fusion Garage went ahead indeed, and unveiled the CrunchPad, renamed as Joo Joo, and opened up the pre-orders. What they had not yet done, though, was file an official response to Arrington’s lawsuit. Back then, even, it was clear that Arrington’s filing looked sloppy, and kind of fell apart because there was no contract between him and Fusion Garage.
Surprise, surprise, the sloppiness of Arrington’s filing is being used extensively by Fusion Garage. I’m not going to detail all of it, since Engadget has already done a pretty good job. The conclusion is that Arrington has some serious amending to do, or else face a rather quick defeat.
Moving on, sgentrepreneurs had a talk with Fusion Garage’s CEO, Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, and Rathakrishnan said that thanks to the iPad announcement, pre-orders of the Joo Joo actually went up. If this is true, it still might not say much though, since no numbers were given out.
Rathakrishnan also detailed that an announcement will arrive this week, in which a new partner will be unveiled who will actually take care of all the manufacturing costs. Apparently, it’s a major mobile phone player with “significant” market share in South-east Asia. Fusion Garage will pay royalties to this major player, which, as sgentrepreneurs rightfully points out, sounds a bit weird – you usually pay royalties to someone who owns IP.
The Joo Joo could indeed be a more appealing alternative for geeks than the iPad. The iPad will be closed off entirely, and Apple is determined to keep jailbreaking illegal, so that when you want to fully utilise your iPad, you’ll be breaking the law. The Joo Joo is Linux-based, so it will most likely win out on the whole free aspect. On the other hand, it barely has any local storage (4GB), and, of course, Fusion Garage might not exactly be the stable company you want to give your money to.
I have no plans to give this company or it’s partner a single dollar for stealing the product from Arrington, and for giving it such a stupid name besides.
I want the person who brainstormed the device and did most of the original development to get what is rightfully his.
Having been someone who has created IP in the past, and was treated fairly… I’m standing for others to be treated fairly as well.
I wonder if they got permission to use that Avatar image on their promotional material…?
As a technology lawyer, my sympathy for trained lawyers pretending to be technology experts who nevertheless fail to get a properly drafted written contract with collaborating development partners is (to put it succinctly) limited.
I have a question for you: Why did a former lawyer not create a legal agreement?
Michael Arrington’s brainstorming and “original development” amounts to wanting to create a cheap, browser-centric tablet. Fusion Garage didn’t steal anything; there was nothing to steal. Arrington’s only significant contribution was hype.
Did you bother to read the Engadget article linked to? Arrington’s a bad journalist, a terrible lawyer, and has no case.
Edited 2010-02-01 23:06 UTC
True. All true, but that doesn’t make fusion garage any less of a slime ball operation. Not getting a thin dime from me or any one I have any influence with.
There is definately two sides to the story, and I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Chandra basically says that he had the same idea for a conductive tablet consumption device and was moving forward on it. During TC50, he approached arrington and they ended up partnering up. Chandra basically says that after that there was little to no help from TC outside of promotion, and that arrington gave him the runaround on actually signing an agreement, so when it was done, he basically told arrington that he was going his own way.
Arrington says that TC helped substancially with the creation of the device, and that the breaking of ways came out of thin air, and hurt him personally and emotionally.
If Chandra was completely lying, there would have been a business agreement, which there wasn’t. On the other hand, there is documented evidence of Fusion Garage people mixing with TC people both in america and in asia for extended periods of time. Chandra says that they were basically just hanging out, which I find sort of hard to swallow.
There are nothing original about tablet PC.
Many people have already come out with the idea many years ago. However, due to technology limitation, it is not been implemented.
In this case, the company that can pull it off will get the IP. Fusion Garage have the upper hand with all the aces cards.
For your info, some chinese company already produce IPad clones before it is announce. Fujisu already come out with a IPAD in year 2001. We may see more law suits in the near future.
I find your statement humorous as this case basically boils down to what Xerox did. They let a bunch of geeks see there work and not sign an NDA. Then the Mac OS was born. Considering Xerox really developed the first windowing GUI and the mouse, they really got the shaft for it. This is why Trade Secrets are a protected class of IP.
Perhaps you should learn the actual history of what happened at Xerox before …
“At any rate, Jobs, who was first told by Raskin about the fun going on at PARC in 1976, decided that he wanted to bring a team of Appleniks into PARC and see what was causing such a buzz – but again, the idea of Jobs coming in like a kid touring Epcot with a tape recorder hidden under his shirt is mistaken. Apple negotiated a deal with Xerox; in return for a block of Apple stock, Xerox allowed Jobs and his team to tour PARC in December 1979, take notes, and implement some of the ideas and concepts being bounced around at PARC in their own creations. ”
http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/real-history-gui/5#
… the ideas were bought from Xerox in return for Apple stock, far from the theft of ideas you are suggesting.
I am not saying that Apple literally stole anything, but Xerox gave away technology that would change the world for a pittance. If you share your ideas without a firm contract in place, you may end up giving away something more valuable than what your getting in return.
That’s actually not true. Both Microsoft and Apple looked at the Xerox technology as invited guests.
It’s all a fable that anything was “stolen”.
There’s no law against being an ass, that’s why we have contracts. Seriously, WTF was he thinking?
To be honest, the iPhone OS is way more polished then anything I have seen from the JooJoo. I would rather have the JooJoo OS then a full Windows 7 (like what HP is doing), but the iPad is going to win this through mind share and versatility.
Thing that drives me nuts is the names, can’t anyone top JooJoo or iPad??
Edited 2010-02-01 22:31 UTC
iPooPoo!
iJohny. Stink Different.
We are? Some people have actual lives, you know.
What exactly is appealing about a stripped down tablet that does nothing but load a web browser? Even if people do find it appealing, by the time the idiotically-named Joo Joo takes off, ChromeOS will have whooped them at their own game.
…at which point you can easily install ChromeOS or any other Linux distribution on the Joo Joo.
Can you? Please prove this statement with actual hard facts, rather than speculation and assumption. You *should* be able to, but no one has proven you can or cannot.
The fact that it runs Linux doesn’t mean you can install whatever you want. Look at Android phones for example; they run Linux, but I can’t run whatever I want on my Motorola Milestone: the booloader check for rsa signatures everywhere.
This tablet is not worth the $499 they want for it. Its limited storage is only one problem. If I get a tablet I’d like it to have the functionality of an e-reader along with the web browsing. I don’t know of any e-reader software for linux, and the fonts have usually been not so great. I’m going to hold out until I can find a cheaper tablet device, hopefully they will get into the $200 – $300 range over time.
Nohrtec is developing a tablet version of the Gecko Edubook. It won’t be as thin, or as slick as the Joo Joo or iPad, but it will run Linux and Windows and it will be cheap and expandable.
I’m waiting to see what they finally come out with, since only a prototype has been shown on Youtube.