posted by Thom Holwerda on Sat 17th Oct 2009 22:03 UTC, submitted by mbpark
It's really been an Amiga week, hasn't it? As such, it seems only fitting to close this week off with some seriously epic news from the Amiga community. As most of you will know, Hyperion and Amiga, Inc. have been embroiled in a tough legal battle over the distribution and development rights of the AmigaOS, and all its associated trademarks. The epic news is that this situation is now completely and utterly resolved.Hyperion Entertainment is the company who has developed AmigaOS 4.x since 2001. The problem, however, was that Hyperion could not just develop the AmigaOS for whatever hardware it wanted; a number of complicated legal constructions were really obstructing the Amiga platform. It even led to a legal battle between Hyperion and Amiga, Inc.
After years and years of uncertainty, the two parties have now reached an extensive, end-all-be-all settlement agreement under which Hyperion gets the rights to the Amiga trademarks, as well as the rights to AmigaOS 3.x, AmigaOS 4.x, and any possible future version.
Within the framework of the settlement agreement 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 without limitation AmigaOS 5) in any form, on any medium and for any current or future hardware platform under the exclusive trademark "AmigaOS" (Amiga operating system) and using other associated trademarks (such as the "BoingBall" logo).
This means that no legal issues stand in the way of further developing and expanding the Amiga platform. It means we could see the AmigaOS expanded to PowerPC Macintosh machines, much like MorphOS recently did.
This is great news for us operating system enthusiasts, and, of course, for Hyperion itself. Most of all, however, I would like to congratulate the Amiga community with this news, as they had to sit through this nonsense year after year, and watch in disgust as their beloved platform was restrained by legal nonsense.
Here's to a prosperous future for the Amiga!
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