14 DAY TRIAL // Even though some of the big players have finally managed to settle down and resolve their differences after years of legal disputes, it seems that the IT industry still has more than enough resources to provide grounds for more lawsuits, accusations, litigations and any other type of dispute known to man. This time around, the TechCrunch blog team filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage over a variety of alleged legal violations on its part related to the formerly joint effort known as the CrunchPad.
The lawsuit comes even though the CrunchPad, now named the JooJoo tablet by Fusion Garage, was meant to be the two teams' joint project and had already gained enough financing to be developed and released on schedule. TechCrunch says that Fusion Garage misled it into believing that the project was developing smoothly, until the latter suddenly decided to exclude it from the project and release the CrunchPad tablet on its own, with its name and brand changed.
The complete list of accusations made by the team against the Singapore-based company includes the Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Fraud and Deceit, as well as the violation of the Lanham Act. The team's leader, Michael Arrington, also comments on the accused company's financial status and on how it has been putting the JooJoo up for pre-order even though its supposedly serious financial troubles hint at Fusion Garage's likely inability to carry out the shipments, effectively leading to customers not getting its devices.
TechCrunch outlined the possibility of Pegatron (ASUS' manufacturing arm) also filing a lawsuit against the Singaporean company. According to the team, Fusion Garage is no longer working with Pegatron, even though the latter exclusively owns most of the intellectual property used in the tablet's creation. It is implied that Fusion Garage may have given this intellectual property to its new ODM and that Pegatron has already expressed concern over this possibility.
The post detailing the situation may be read on the TechCrunch blog.