Remember that other tablet, which came out right around the same time the iPad was released? Yeah, the joojoo, by Fusion Garage. During its development, it was known as the CrunchPad, and emerged out of some form of collaboration between Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch and Chandrasekhar Rathakrisnan’s Fusion Garage. Things went sour between the two, and eventually, Fusion Garage released the joojoo on its own. Consequently, Arrington sued, and we’ve got the first major court decision.
Let’s back up a little – to December 2009, to be exact. We’re talking December 7, 2009, and Fusion Garage just unveiled the joojoo, formerly known as the CrunchPad. They do so after their collaboration with TechCrunch went sour. Consequently, Arrington sued Fusion Garage only a few days later. It took a few months, but in February 2010, Fusion Garage filed a motion to dismiss TechCrunch’s suit.
Arrington wrote that the causes for the suit “include Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competitition and Violations of the Lanham Act”. Fusion Garage motioned to have all of these dismissed, and in today’s ruling, the judge does pretty much that; except for the breach of fiduciary duty, the judge sides with Fusion Garage on all accounts.
This seems like a major loss for Arrington, but it actually isn’t that bad. The other claims were so incredibly vague (the word “hodgepodge” is dropped by the judge) that they were pretty much useless anyway (as Engadget already noted when the suit first got out). Breach of fiduciary duty is a good base to work from, and gives the lawyers the opportunity to focus on what was already the strongest aspect.
The big problem seems to be what everybody already anticipated: lack of a decent written contract between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage. This makes it very hard for Arrington to make any claims, but thanks to jurisprudence, the judge came to the conclusion that there was a joint venture between the two parties – even if they didn’t have it in writing. Partnerships and joint ventures – more or less the same thing legally, states the judge – can be implied as well, and that was clearly the case here.
Arrington has 20 days to amend some of his complaints, and the breach of fiduciary duty thing will have to be handled in court. At this point, does anybody even care, though?
“At this point, does anybody even care, though?”
You mean aside from Arrington? No, not really. Had the product have taken off and been a sales success then sure. It’s not a bad product, it just hasn’t sold all that well. Either way, never get into any sort of agreement that makes to to the production stage without a written (and notarized where applicable) contract. Anyone who’s ever gotten into a “he said, she said” style argument will tell you to do that first thing.
Well, the product was always promoted as costing half as much as it actually did when released. Its not quite fair to judge it based on how fusion garage released it.
Combine high price with shady company, negative publicity and questionable software and you get few sales. I don’t doubt that it could have been a success at half the price with tech crunch behind it.
It just blows my mind that Tech Crunch didn’t sign a contract with fusion garage. Its like not buckling your seat belt and getting in a car with a guy that reeks of alcohol.
Given your analogy – I’m not surprised at all… chances are, if you’re willingly getting in a car with a drunk – you’re probably loaded as well, and probably not coherent enough to realize the danger, let alone bother to buckle your seatbelt…
Perhaps that describes this situation more aptly than one thinks – there seemed to be some recklessness involved in this business venture, a sort of “rush to market” attitude with both parties without fully considering whether it made good business sense.
Edited 2010-08-30 18:22 UTC
“Given your analogy – I’m not surprised at all… chances are, if you’re willingly getting in a car with a drunk – you’re probably loaded as well, and probably not coherent enough to realize the danger, let alone bother to buckle your seatbelt…”
haha, you beat me to it! Was going to make that same comment…
Price seems cheap to me. 359 eur for 12 inch tablet.
EDIT: hell, for that price, I might actually consider getting one. It seems legit, straight from the joo joo website.
Edited 2010-08-30 20:04 UTC
The crunch pad was promoted as a $199 device. Which would be like 158 euros today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crunch_Pad#History
So, when everyone was expecting it to be half of the cost, it turned a lot of people off. The public feud with a respected Silicon valley journalist/ company incubator didn’t help.
I think the two biggest issues were the software itself wasn’t quite ready for prime time, and the lousy battery life (2 hours). The iPad has about 10 hours of battery (and I’ve seen it in action) which makes a huge difference in its usability, especially for long flights.
I want to know why the person who came up with the name “JooJoo” wasn’t laughed out of the company. I mean come on, what the hell is a JooJoo suppose to be anyway?
Hey Everybody! I have the perfect name for our tablet computer! Lets call it the SnumSnum!
NOOOOOOOO…. I’ve got a better one!
Introducing on new Computing Tablet: Snew-Snew!
It even avoids the soon to be obvious Copyrights!
Imagine the headlines where someone is so engaged with it and walk off a cliff or into a road… broke his pelvic bones.
Death by Snew-Snew!
“Kiff, inform the men. I made snew snew…” haha
“I never thought I’d die like this, but I always hoped.”
Edited 2010-08-30 19:12 UTC
fixed it for you.
Thank you. so hard to keep all the futurama quotes correct in there. my brain these days feels like a big pile of burning batteries.
Perhaps he could have named it the cumcum and marketed it as the ultimate porn downloading device.
But for business, the lowest he could lose would be to have the case entirely dismissed if he didn’t pay for marketing (I didn’t see it) or manufacturing: it was DOA when released, and undoubtedly has been only pure loss, and with its limited capability and horrid battery life has no chance against the far better engineering of the iPad for both software and hardware for usability. Sorry, even though it claims to support Flash (which it does badly) doesn’t make up for all the other flaws.
It just goes to show that while having a good contract is very important when something goes wrong, US law is pretty clear that if you can provide some evidence that some terms were discussed about working together in any capacity, it’s a perfectly valid (verbal) legal contract, and verbal contracts have legal weight.
A lot of people seem to think that if they don’t have it in writing, they can’t be held to what they agree to. But that’s not strictly the case.
Two bald men fighting over a comb?
It was the image that first popped into my head when I read this story
The device seems pretty useless without Internet access, where as eBook readers and the iPad are useful with or without Internet access.
If you would run a technological business company and Arrington contact you about making some business together, would you trust him?
Not that I was much of a fan of A. before, but definitely after this ‘joojoo-gate’ I wouldn’t.
My prior comments about the ridiculous naming and its chances of survival on the market aside, I was hoping Arrington would be acknowledged as a major participant in the development. They pulled an awfully dirty trick on him kicking him out right before the release of the device and pretending it was something else. I am surprised FG even thought they could get away with it while Arrington has always been the name and face associated with the CrunchPad.
Here’s to hoping the higher courts have the same sense of justice…