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Joojoo lawsuit shocker! Court rules Fusion Garage and TechCrunch were business partners, tosses most everything else
It's been a few blissful months since we've thought about or had to interact with the Joojoo, but the court case Michael Arrington and TechCrunch filed against Fusion Garage just reached a significant milestone: the judge threw out several of Arrington's claims while importantly holding that TechCrunch and Fusion Garage were in fact business partners with legal obligations to each other. Here's the basic timeline so far: since there was (unbelievably) never a contract between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage to develop the CrunchPad / Joojoo, TechCrunch had to rely on a variety of alternative arguments in its initial complaint, which reached a zenith of optimistic fabrication in something called "misappropriation of business ideas." (We ran down the whole list way back in December, and also broke down Fusion Garage's subsequent motion to dismiss in February.) The court didn't buy most of those arguments and dismissed everything but the breach of fiduciary duty claim in this latest ruling, which is both a significant loss and a significant win for TechCrunch: breach of fiduciary duty has always struck us as TechCrunch's strongest argument, and the court's now effectively ruled that Fusion Garage and TechCrunch were indeed involved in a joint business venture with legal obligations to protect each others' interests. That's not a bad position from which to proceed -- although TechCrunch now has to prove that Fusion Garage actually violated its duty by releasing the Joojoo on its own, which is a whole new fight. (The court also gave TechCrunch 20 days to try and amend some of its other claims, but "misappropriation of business ideas" was basically thrown out the window entirely.) So what's next? We're guessing another few months of cheerfully hostile motions accusing the opposing party of thwarting discovery and some firecracker depositions, all culminating in a matched pair of snippy motions for summary judgment. The suits, they dine well tonight. P.S.- How or why either company continues to pay for all these legal bills is beyond us, but we've actually heard rumors of a Joojoo 2, so things could get even crazier. And potentially even less responsive to touch-based events.
HP Slate killed? Rumor mill says 'yes'
Last night TechCrunch reported that, according to an unnamed "source briefed on the matter," HP had stopped development of the Slate in its tracks, killing off the project entirely. Why? Well, according to the source, HP isn't thrilled with Windows 7's performance on the tablet. The Slate -- which was officially unveiled in January by Steve Ballmer himself -- had a rumored price of $549, and was supposedly launching in June. So, what should we make of all this? Well, there's probably some major chaos over at HP with the news of the Palm acquisition, so we wouldn't be surprised to hear some shaky -- or even incorrect -- information coming out of the company right now. On the other hand, HP killing off the project doesn't sound completely out of the realm of possibility to us. We've reached out to HP for comment, but they've yet to get back to us. We'll let you know when we hear something more concrete. Update: Here's the response we just go from HP -- "We don't comment on rumors or speculation."
Steve Ballmer talks 'three screens and a cloud' and more with TechCrunch
Steve Ballmer's talk at Microsoft's Venture Capital Summit yesterday may have only been open to a select few, but non-VCs can now get the next best thing courtesy of TechCruch, which got a chance to sit down with Ballmer following the event. In the wide-ranging interview, Ballmer discusses Microsoft's new "three screens and a cloud" strategy, which he describes as a "fundamental shift in the computing paradigm" (and can't help but compare to Three Men and a Baby), as well as Microsoft's "fun year" with things like Bing, Windows 7, and Project Natal, and Microsoft's future acquisition strategy (it'll probably buy about another 15 companies next year). Of particular note, Ballmer also went some way to dampen any talk of a Microsoft-banded phone, saying that while an Apple or RIM can "do just fine," Microsoft still thinks a software play is right for them in such a high volume market -- noting that, "when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that's gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software that's sold by somebody who doesn't make their own phone." Head on past the break to see the whole thing for yourself.
Palm launching smaller Pre-like device later this year says rumor-mill
As if we didn't have enough Pre rumors to sort through, along comes TechCrunch and Mikey A. with some hard hitting stuff. According to the TC honcho, one of his "better sources" claims that Palm is "very far along" on a second webOS device which is smaller and slimmer than the Pre and may or may not have a physical keyboard. Apparently, this won't be the iPhone 3G to the first-gen iPhone, rather a device which addresses "a different part of the market." Details are still sketchy, but Arrington claims that the "Mini-Pre" (his name) will land sometime this year -- possibly as soon as the Fall. This is all complete rumor right now, but Palm has previously said that there would be more than one webOS device, so the idea of another model in the oven doesn't exactly come as a surprise. Stay tuned for further updates as we get them.
Foxconn builds 800,000 iPhones per week?
TechCrunch is reporting that Foxconn (the Taiwanese Apple manufacturing plant) is building over 800,000 iPhones per week in order to meet demand. They are also reporting that this means the plant is working "above current full capacity" and notes that the quality control might not be the best at this time.Apple has moved more than 6 million iPhone units in just the first year. According to TechCrunch, Apple's run rate for the iPhone 3G is over 40 million units per year.
The Value of Second Life
This TechCrunch article lets drop that one of Linden Lab's early investors, Catamount Ventures, sold ten percent of their stock to a third party for an undisclosed amount that was valuated at 'above half a billion' dollars, as stated by an anonymous source with knowledge of the company.What surprises me most about this article, beyond the massive amounts of money being mentioned, are the mostly positive comments after the article. Having seen rather a lot of these go by, I expected a ton of lame duck jokes about the value of Second Life being virtually nothing, etc. but by and large people are taking it seriously. Of course, for me and thousands of others, the true value in SL is its social component. Without that one-to-one connection, there truly is little to value.(Via techcrunch.com)
