UPDATE: Since this story was posted, a couple more items have come to light regarding the TechCrunch vs. Fusion Garage situation. I have placed them below the jump and updated the timestamp.
The handheld-related lawsuits are flying today. First, the latest salvo in the sordid story of TechCrunch vs. Fusion Garage. Michael Arrington posts that the lawsuit has been filed, and includes a link to the 41-page filing (PDF).
Arrington makes a number of allegations, some stranger than others. One is that he believes Fusion Garage’s financial status is very insecure, and it is his opinion that the cash flow from Joo Joo (nee CrunchPad) pre-orders will go toward funding their legal defense—not toward actually building the devices. Pre-order at your own risk.
It should be said that there are two sides to every story. Some of the commenters on Arrington’s post point out that there is no sign in the filing of an actual written contract between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage. This lawsuit is probably going to get very messy.
UPDATE: Peter Smith Skeptical
Blogger Peter Smith from IT World looks at Arrington’s post and notices a few inconsistencies. Concerning Arrington’s pre-order allegations, he writes:
This attempt to directly sway the press away from Fusion Garage really spikes my suspicion meter. After all, Arrington is the press. If I started writing screeds advising him on what he should or should not say about a product, what would he think? I suggest he’d think I was just doing everything I could to further my agenda.
UPDATE: Fusion Garage Tells Its Side
A reporter from Engadget has managed to sit down and talk with Chandra Rathakrishnan of Fusion Garage. The result is a 7-minute video in which Chandra discusses some technical details of the Joo Joo, which is capable of 1080p video playback among other things.
He also talks about the situation with Michael Arrington. As expected, his take on the situation differs considerably from Arrington’s.
Apple vs. Nokia
The other lawsuit of note today is the broadside exchange between Apple and Nokia. In October, Nokia fired on Apple, claiming the iPhone infringes a number of Nokia’s patents. Now Apple has blasted Nokia back with a return salvo, claiming much the same thing but with the names reversed.
This is nothing unusual in the world of high technology, of course. These gadgets are so complicated that a single device could incorporate the products of dozens of patents, and no one company can own them all.
Generally, technology companies own enough to practice a sort of “mutually-assured patent obstruction”—if someone sues them for violating a patent, they can turn around and sue them right back tit-for-tat. This is the rationale Amazon famously claimed for patenting the one-click ordering process.
We are now seeing exactly that type of mutually-assured lawsuit in action.
Although I am not a lawyer, I doubt the Nokia vs. Apple lawsuits will go all the way to litigation. It seems more likely to me that these are just the opening moves in a dance that will eventually lead to a quiet settlement.
