The CrunchPad/Joo Joo soap opera continues. Michael Arrington remained silent during the introduction of the Joo Joo, but today he filed the lawsuit against Fusion Garage, and posted the actual document of it on the internet (naturally). The case presents, in great detail, Arrington’s side of the story.
And Arrington’s side of the story paints Fusion Garage and its CEO as a company with money issues, and troubles delivering on some of the hard and software milestones. So far, this doesn’t appear to be particularly surprising – I have little experience with these matters, and the only other startup whose origin story I know is Be, Inc, and they were in financial troubles all the time during the early years (and later on, too, obviously). Maybe someone with more knowledge on this subject can weigh in.
According to the lawsuit, TechCrunch played a major role in the development of the CrunchPad/Joo Joo, with Fusion Garage contributing much less. This of course directly contradicts the words of Fusion Garage, who claim the exact opposite – namely, that Fusion Garage did all the work. I guess we’ll never really know the truth.
So, what are the actual claims made by Arrington against Fusion Garage? “The causes of action include Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competitition and Violations of the Lanham Act,” Arrington writes at the TechCrunch blog. Quite a list.
Sadly, Arrington also decided to start flinging the poo around, seriously discrediting the company and man who up until a few days ago we were supposed to trust completely. This leads to rather crazy situations – Arrington claims that he was well aware that Fusion Garage was “and always has been, a company on the edge of going out of business”. Also, “Fusion Garage’s financial situation is a mess”. If this was indeed the case, why go into business with them?
It gets worse. Arrington also details how the CrunchPad “top tier investors […] didn’t love the way Fusion Garage and its founder checked out on background checks”, but that they decided to support the project anyway. Again – why do business with a company and man whose backgrounds don’t check out? Even if Fusion Garage turns out to be the bad guy here – weren’t you simply asking for trouble? Something about a frog, a scorpion, and a river.
And then the poo flinging really starts. Arrington writes that “the founder of Fusion Garage, Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, isn’t a good guy”, pointing to an article detailing that he has committed plagiarism. Arrington adds that “Chandra and Fusion Garage have shown a long term pattern of deceit in their business dealings”, but that he didn’t learn about this until last summer, “because Singapore media, including blogs, are largely controlled by the government”.
At this point, I have no idea who to believe. All I see are a bunch of monkeys jumping up and down the monkey cage, with one of the monkeys throwing poo at the other. As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but at this point I most certainly wouldn’t want to place my orders. Which is sad – the device itself is beautiful, and certainly powerful enough to run a real operating system (before the poo hit the fan, Arrington suggested it could run Windows 7 – want!).
Arrington alludes to this, and strongly advises the press not to link to the Joo Joo ordering page: “We believe it is irresponsible for press to link to the pre-sale site without disclosing this to readers.” This in and of itself is rather… Unfortunate, as Arrington is part of the press himself. Mr Arrington, I don’t need you telling me to what I can and cannot link. I think our readers are perfectly capable to decide for themselves whether or not to place pre-orders.
One big question remains, the one question which makes me doubt Arrington’s sincerity: where is the contract? Arrington, a lawyer himself, should’ve known better than to cooperate without any form of a contract with a company which he knew to be problematic and shady. So far, Arrington refuses to tell us whether or not there is a contract, which probably means there isn’t one. If Fusion Garage and its CEO were really as shady as Arrington claims he knew, then not having a contract seems utterly, utterly stupid.
Or, they really weren’t as shady as Arrington claims, and therefore, cold and hard contracts weren’t deemed necessary. I’m sorry Arrington, but you’ll have to clear this one up first.
Some background might be good. What is Crunchpad? What is Joo Joo? Who is Michael Arrington? What is Fusion Garage? Why should we care?
How about checking up the front page?
http://www.osnews.com/story/22583/Fusion_Garage_Announces_Joo_Joo_T…
Who the hell would buy a product with either “JooJoo” or “Crunchpad” anywhere in the name? Sounds like a toddler’s toy.
Marketing. Learn it.
How could partnering with a chiropractor not end in success?
Edited 2009-12-12 00:07 UTC
I’m not a lawyer, but based on my worthless opinion, I’d say that TechCrunch has a pretty good case. I watched the unavailing of the Joo Joo, from the presentation its pretty clear to me that Fusion Garage is a bunch of engineers who might not be up on California Law.
But still, Tech Crunch was crazy for not having a more concrete contractual relationship with them. That was stupid. I hope any business students pick up on this: always have a contract when collaborating on a project. I’ve been around a few lawsuits to understand that. Get a contract, sign it, follow it to the T. Anything else is stupid. No verbal agreements or implied partnerships.
Do you realize you sort of contradicted yourself there?
How can Tech Crunch have a good case without any signed contract or even a remote piece of documentation in that regard? The suit is frivolous to the extreme, how can you sue a company without any paper trail and all the items in the suit are regarding “suggestions?”
It is a useless gadget anyways, although I must confess I got a hoot out of this whole case. Hopefully the overwhelming hubris will finally shut up some of these so-called “experts.”
No, I didn’t. Read the actual lawsuit. They reference California’s implied partnership law. Which basically says that if you work on a project like a partnership would, then you are a partnership and all products of that partnership are jointly owned.
If that is an actual law, and they actually meet the requirements of that law, then I’d have to conclude that the joo joo/ crunch pad is jointly owned by both companies.
But they would have a stronger case if they had a contract, as contract law is a little more established and clear cut.
Gremlin (vehicle)
Odoroma (deodorant)
Collision (ferris wheel)
CrunchPad (something that breaks when sat upon).
Sanity is the best policy.
I still don’t understand what is all the hype. It’s just a screen that can only act a web browser for $500. It immediately become desirable just because you can touch it.
For the same money you can get a pretty decent netbook or a labtop that can outperform this and do more tasks. Your arms aren’t going to break from carrying a few extra ounces. Even Apple products are more compelling at this point.
I can’t even see this thing as commercially prevalent for too many people beside those who has money to blow. It would be somewhat a little more attractive if it cost $200-$250 and has a name that isn’t racist sounding.
Edited 2009-12-12 01:20 UTC
My favorite is still “iSmell”.
A ChiroQUACKter.
If I didn’t read it in a soap opera script, I would never have thought it.
In any case, I would like to point out, that you can’t do everything in a business by a contract. Suffice to say, if you want to get anything done, you have to turn off the voice recorders agree and trust each other.
I mean, for the most part, if someone wants to void the agreement, if it is the spoken word, or a sheet of paper with all sorts of legal mumbo jumbo and neatly organized sections, that someone will.
You don’t honestly think a stack of paper is going to change that do you?
So I think everyone is putting too much emphasis on contract this contract that.
But the whole Bruce Lee thing is just well, something out of a twilight zone movie, me thinks.
I am just thankful over the Xmas break I will have something enjoyable to read. 🙂
-Hack
Look. If you get together with a like soul and decide to hack together a cool new music player you probably should have a contract, but it’s pretty understandable if you don’t. When your like soul starts to try to sell your work for a profit, you’ll learn your lesson then. When the endeavor crashes and burns, taking his marketing investment with it, he’ll learn his.
But when you are explicitly eveloping a freaking hardware item for marketing… and you don’t have a written agreement… that’s just stupid. No two ways about it. Actually, it’s probably a bit smart on the part of the stronger party. But seriously stupid on the part of the weaker.
Edited 2009-12-12 03:55 UTC
Well, I am not sure you understand.
Doesn’t matter what the product is.
It has to do with trust. The fact still remains.
If you have a trusting relationship, your not going to need to document everything.
A marriage contract is pretty generalized, yet if your wife turns out to be a bad cook, or you leave your clothes and next to never do any of the laundry, I doubt you would cite the marriage contract as deficient. Of course not, the trust part comes when you resolve the situation. Sometimes in my Dad’s case with his clothes…it takes 45 years of negotiating and then you have to give up on him, because well, he died.
There must be trust, and no amount of legal paper is going to change that.
Curiously, most people who have huge contracts, are usually the ones who want them, so they can screw the other person.
After all, each contract provides about as much opportunity for a loophole based on how much each party can pay a lawyer.
For example, you don’t think the bankers this year who are getting 30 billion in bonuses (Larger than ENTIRE GDP’s of some countries) for burying the US economy are training themselves and hiring private security forces to obtain these bonuses by contract by the end of the year, have SIMPLE contracts do you?
Well of course not, because they actually want collect the ill gotten gains, as well as live to spend them.
People who trust each other on the other hand, have very simple contracts.
My parents were married for 45 years before they both died. The contract was one sheet of paper.
In my book, trust and understanding between two people who actually want to do something together and accomplish something, don’t need huge contracts with a team of lawyers.
Marriages are FAR more complex than many corporations and the challenges can be quite enormous.
You sir, I think are muddying the water so to speak.
-Hack
Well then lets get Arrington and Rathakrishnan on OSnews for an interview and ask them about how far trust alone gets you in a hardware development and marketing endeavor.
Edited 2009-12-13 02:09 UTC
Family law is completely different from contract law, bub. Talk about “muddying the water”!
The rest of your advice is, well, plain frightening and a recipe for business disaster. A good contract simply pre-negotiates foreseeable problems in the partnership before they happen. For a few hundred dollars, Arrington could have paid a lawyer to specify exactly what he would receive should his “partners” decide to cancel their agreement, making this a straightforward case. He’ll pay FAR more now to have a judge and a team of lawyers sort out this disaster than he would have paid up front.
The old proverb is wisdom itself: A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
Really bad cooking and laundry problems being deal breakers for a marriage?!? That’s sad. Maybe you were just throwing out hypothetical, but those are pretty pathetic. I mean I’m sure some marriages do end for such stupid reasons, but one or both of the two were pretty stupid for getting in that relationship to begin with.
You obviously are not recognizing how bad these things can get. Terrible cooking, chronic diarrhea. It’s a vicious cycle!
Seriously, though, comparing a marriage to a business deal to develop and market a hardware device is just retarded.
Edited 2009-12-13 19:08 UTC
Is Arrington a cheated victim? A naive fool? Or a delusional and bitter ex-business partner?
Doesn’t matter. Losing interest in the doomed JooJoo / Crunchpad might just be the best thing that has ever happened to Michael Arrington. Like dodging a bullet, the Huge Failure Bullet.
Any money he can squeeze from Fusion Garage will be icing on his cake.
I found that this statement is very funny
“We didn’t learn about this until last Summer because
Singapore media, including blogs, are largely controlled by the government. Embarrassing stuff just isn’t reported.”
Although Singapore government like to cover up embarrassing stuff related to the government. However, Fusion Garage is not a Government Linked Company and Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan doesn’t have any connections to anyone in the ruling party.
Therefore, it is unlikely that Singapore Government would want to cover up his ass
I think CrunchPad is a big fat liar who want to make big bucks without investing too much money or risk. They make empty promise to Rathakrishnan so that Fusion Garage would do the R&D for them.
“As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle”
Why do people always say this???? Averaging two positions is not a good way to arrive at the truth.
In general this is *not* the case. Sometimes it is, very frequently it isn’t.
Jeez.
You’re interpreting the phrase too literally. It doesn’t mean that the truth is exactly halfway between the two versions, only that it certainly won’t be found at either end. Both parties probably have some justification for their positions, and just as probably, some exaggeration to make those positions look better.
Well, as s true geek, I’d stick with a sci-fi quote (now from B5) fitting this subject:
“Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.”
Ah, B5. Had they had more money, it would’ve kicked the arse of any Star Trek.
Great show. Ivanova ftw!
I checked this “joo joo” site and there’s barely any info about the company – and the website of the company itself redirects to this site -, no indication of copyrights, the pictures of the device are clearly fake with embedded pictures from a new movie without indication of the source, misspelled trademarks, and so on. Only a “pre-order” option.
How can someone trust such a site? Spam drug sellers does a much better job at designing their web sites.