14 DAY TRIAL // About a week ago, TechCrunch team leader Michael Arrington filed the lawsuit against Fusion garage over alleged Misappropriation of business Ideas, Fraud and Deceit, Breach of Fiduciary Duty and violation of the Lanham Act. Now, the official response on the part of the accused took the form of an official statement which not only denied Arrington's accusations but even described them as attempts to “bully public opinion”.
"We find Arrington's ongoing attempts to bully public opinion and members of the media to be the sad rants of a person championing a losing cause."
Among the allegations brought by Arrington and which Fusion garage starkly denies is the allusion that the Singaporean company had given Pegatron's intellectual property to a different ODM. The statement also offered assurance that consumers who placed pre-orders need have no concerns about whether or not they will get their shipments, as the tablets will be delivered on schedule.
"[We] established [a] relationship [with Pegatron] after Arrington's promises of hardware development support proved to be hollow," the statement said. " [We are] now working with another top tier ODM to develop a completely new board and mechanical layout that is the basis for the JooJoo. To state, as the lawsuit and accompanying blog post do, that Fusion Garage's joojoo is based on any Pegatron IP is false."
The company statement seems to suggest that Fusion Garage is actually reaping benefits from the entire affair, regardless of how unfortunate. The statement says that the JooJoo brought in a large dosage of what is dubbed as “positive feedback” from the media and the IT industry.
"We have received more than 6,000 email inquiries to our website and pre-orders to date have exceeded our expectations," claimed Fusion Garage. "Dredging up old and nebulous material only reflects [Arrington's] desperation for material."
It seems that the lawsuit filed by TechCrunch against the Singaporean company is bittersweet and it is rather difficult to speculate the direction that the entire affair will take.