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HardOCP Declares Win vs. Infinium Labs

Posted by Zonk on Wed Jan 05, 2005 11:22 AM
from the power-to-the-people! dept.
Government The Courts Censorship Entertainment Games News
Bill Bagel writes "Many of us have watched Infinium Labs' attempt to quash HardOCP's First Amendment right for the last year. HardOCP wrote this story on the Infinium Labs CEO, Tim Roberts, that was based on his own resume and some Google research. IL sued HardOCP, a home-based webpage business for $20M in Florida, and HardOCP fought back in a Federal Court in Texas for a declaratory judgment. HardOCP basically won when Infinium Labs finally gave up the fight citing great expenses involved in fighting the declaratory suit. The judge's order can be found here." The Cliff's Notes version can be found on WhereisPhantom.com.
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  • Judge's signature (Score:5, Funny)

    by mr.henry (618818) * on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:23AM (#11264193) Journal
    It's worth RTFA just to see the judge's funky signature. I guess I can make out the first name, but I don't see how you can get "KAPLAN" from a lowercase "a" followed by 13 "u"s.

    Anyhow, congrats to Kyle & HardOCP.

  • Correction for Editors (Score:3, Informative)

    by JamesD_UK (721413) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:26AM (#11264231) Homepage
    WhereisPhatom.com should read WhereisPhantom.com, luckily it's correct in the link.

  • What does this say about... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by samdu (114873) <samdu AT ronintech DOT com> on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:26AM (#11264233) Homepage
    ...the pockets of Infinium? Surely a "company" that's preparing to "release" a new "game system" should have enough "money" in the bank to fight a legal battle like this.
    • ...the pockets of Infinium? Surely a "company" that's preparing to "release" a new "game system" should have enough "money" in the bank to fight a legal battle like this.

      Maybe this is exactly the point of this stunt. Since they couldn't find any suckers with the capital they needed, they decided to go the "legal" route.

    • Re:What does this say about... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hopefully, it says that people were smart enough NOT to given this loser their money.

      The whole point of the HardOCP article was "based on the track record, this guy will take your money, blow it without producing anything of value, and skip out on the bankruptcy."
  • I wonder how long it'll be before IL throws in the towel completely... probably not until they milk every last bit of money from their investors.

    Have fun watching their stock [yahoo.com] flipflop over the next few weeks as the pump&dump crowd has fun with it. :)
    • I wonder how long it'll be before IL throws in the towel completely... probably not until they milk every last bit of money from their investors.

      Don't forget about the sob story they'll tell about how this is all HardOCP's fault from slander to court fees. The longer they drag it out the more they can say they tried but it wasn't their fault. Sickening.
    • If you look at the yahoo link and show the past 1 year of trading you should see that the stock has split, TWICE! The first one was last Jan, a 5 for 1 split, and the second was May, a 4 for 1 split. And the stock has never gone over $2.50. So, even though the price is low, someone (hmmm, wonder who?) is sitting on 20x the stock they had last year. My guess is that after the next 'big announcement' about the product, someone will resign, then take the money and run.

  • This is exactly what I was going to say (Score:3, Funny)

    by umrgregg (192838) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:27AM (#11264244) Homepage
    Who signed that order? I could have been anyone: Jesus The Christuuuuuuuu, Jed Clampetuuuuuuuu, Justin Timberlakeuuuuuuu? Who knows...?
    • Who signed that order? I could have been anyone: Jesus The Christuuuuuuuu, Jed Clampetuuuuuuuu, Justin Timberlakeuuuuuuu? Who knows...?

      The Great Chtulhuuuuuuuuu knows...
  • Even when you win a decision, you still lose because you have to pay thousands to a lawyer for defense. Is it possible for HardOCP to countersue to recoup those fees?
  • Kudos to Kyle for standing up to the bullying tactics that seem to become more and more pervasive each year. Also, it is just absolutely astounding that IL would go after a site that caters news to a potential customer base easily in the tens of thousands for them. Guess they weren't planning on succeeding with their vaporous Phantom in the first place. ....unless it was to be the ultimate platform for the ultimate vapor-sequel, Duke Nukem....

  • Good! Now if only... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chordonblue (585047) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:28AM (#11264261) Homepage Journal
    ...we can get a similar judgement with SCO.

    Yes sir... 2005 is shaping up to be a GREAT year!

  • Rights? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dcw3 (649211) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:31AM (#11264283) Journal
    Can someone please explain to me why corporations are afforded constitutional rights? Was that really the intention of the framers? I was under the impression that rights were for individuals, not companies. Obviously, IANAL, so please correct me if I'm misguided.
    • You are essentially correct, but legally wrong. The framers may have only had individuals in mind, and I think that they did, but AFAIK, that was changed with an amendment somewhere back in the late 1800's/early 1900's.

      I personally think it was a poor decision on the part of congress. Corporations should not have more than a limited set of rights, although the individuals running the corporations should NOT have their own rights abridged by virtue of running the corporation. Rather, they should be liabl

      • There was no amendment (Score:5, Informative)

        by phr2 (545169) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:53AM (#11264463)
        and no act of Congress turning corporations into persons. There was not even a supreme court decision.

        Rather, the notion of corporate personhood got written into some other supreme court decision in the 1870's, by a former railroad executive who was working as a clerk at the Supreme Court. It wasn't part of the actual Court opinion but rather was part of the introduction or something like that, but regardless, later court decisions quoted it and it became binding law.

        The Supreme Court in that era was very corrupt, even worse than now. The 14th amendment (resulting from the Civil War) spelled out a bunch of rights guaranteed to all "persons", i.e. all people (previously, only white people had rights). Corporations realized that they wanted to get in on the action and have those rights themselves, so after sufficient palm greasing, the decisions came down.

        For more info, see the movie "The Corporation", which is really excellent.

        See also: wikipedia on corporate personhood [wikipedia.org].

      • That was changed with an amendment somewhere back in the late 1800's/early 1900's.

        And what's the number of this "corporate rights amendment"? Come on, it's not THAT hard to actually READ the frigging Constitution [archives.gov], is it?

        The legal concept of a corporation as a "person" which has Constitutional rights came from a Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company [tourolaw.edu] in 1886.

        FYI, It only took me about three seconds to find this with a Google search [slashdot.org]. There's no excuse to sp

        • Re:Rights? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Tassach (137772) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @12:25PM (#11264771)
          Corrected Google Link [google.com], before someone jumps on me for it.

        • And what's the number of this "corporate rights amendment"? Come on, it's not THAT hard to actually READ the frigging Constitution [archives.gov], is it?

          The legal concept of a corporation as a "person" which has Constitutional rights came from a Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company [tourolaw.edu] in 1886.

          OK. You seem knowledgeable about this, and I"ve yet to see anyone expound on this further ....

          Has there been any legal basis to challenge/uphold this interpre

    • If you're genuinely interested in such matters, I found this book [amazon.com] a most intriguing read on the subject...

      • Re:Rights? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DunbarTheInept (764) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @11:46AM (#11264400) Homepage
        Because it is physically impossible to put a corporation in prison for a couple of years, treating corporations as if they were individuals gives them all the rights of individuals, but not all the responsibilities of individuals. Corporations breaking the law do not face the same risk of punishment as individuals do. For them it's "Is this infraction worth the risk of a fine?", whereas for actual living, breathing people, the deterrent is "Is this infraction worth the risk of several years of prison?"
        • Then the best thing to do would be to take them out of circulation for a few years. What is theft or fraud to a normal person? A few years in jail? Alright, same with a corporation. Also force businesses to pay their employees a decent severence package to make up for it.

          It would basically be suicide for any corporation to break the law, then.

        • Re:Rights? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by AaronW (33736)
          It's also why you'll never see a corporation admit guilt. By not admitting guilt, whenever they pay a fine they can deduct it from their taxes. Talk about corrupt.
      • In many ways, this makes sense--can you imagine if you individually had a right to free speech, but the New York Times did NOT?

        Well, yes I can, because that's covered separately under the "freedom of the press" provision...right?
  • What in the hell is this article about, exactly? The articles are unclear, at best. There's nothing about a government clampdown on free speech (which is what the first amendment is about). Who are these companies, and what do they do? Slashdot's editorial ability (not that it was ever good) is just getting worse.
    • There's nothing about a government clampdown on free speech

      One company (Infinum) asked the courts to prevent a person (and to drain 20 mil from him in the process) from stating embarassing facts about it's executives.

      The article is about the fact that the U.S. have not yet completely turned into the Incorporated States of America. Rejoice.
  • The one with the smaller pile of funds folds..

    The system is fatally flawed.. and its the lawyers fault.
  • In more ways than one. You couldn't make this stuff up if you were writing for Arrested Development.
  • What's interesting to me in all this is that the console is an attractive concept. Roberts did his market research and crafted, if nothing else, a set of specs that got techies, gamers, and investors excited.

    It wasn't Roomba, iBot, and XBox 8 all rolled up in one. It was a feature set that got a certain subset of the population excited while having the technical underpinnings to make it possible that it could see the light of day at a reasonable price point.

    Call him a con-man or a snake oil salesman if you will, but give him some props for being able to identify the pavlovian triggers that have suckered investors into believing his concepts had merit over and over again. - Greg

  • Parent is Uninformative and WRONG. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bmo (77928) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @12:17PM (#11264684)
    "HardOCP basically won when Infinium Labs finally gave up the fight citing great expenses involved in fighting the declaratory suit"

    Don't the people who submit the stories RTFA? I mean CRIPES. No, they didn't give up because of expenses, they gave up BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HAVE A CASE. RTFA! I mean GEEZ....

    To wit:

    "..does not constitute unfair competition under U.S.C 1125 or an unfair business practice, trade disparagement, trade libel, and tortious interference with contract under Texas law, and that plaintiffs' use of Infinium's trademarks from September 7 2003 through February 19,2004 in connection with the article does not constitute dilution or infringement of those marks or otherwise give rise to liability under federal or state law. Because defendants have ADMITTED (emphasis mine) that plaintiffs are entitled to declaratory relief, they move for judgement on the pleadings in favor of the plaintiffs pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. (Federal Rules for Civil Procedures) 12(c)."

    I mean, c'mon...there's nothing about cost of litigation. It's all the Infinium being full of horse manure.

    --
    BMO

  • Endgame: Fees and Chapter 7 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blueZhift (652272) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @02:22PM (#11266565) Homepage Journal
    Infinium Labs basically has no money for attorney's fees or anything else since the last I heard, they had failed to get any additional investor funding. So I think throwing in the towel on the lawsuit is part of their endgame strategy. Don't be surprised if this is soon followed by Chapter 7 Bankruptcy following CES. Unless they get more money real soon, they are DEAD and the show is over. I think whatever they show at CES is their last chance. Though I still wonder if success was ever even an option [proliphus.com].
    • What do you mean, nothing happened? Infinium has given up the attacks on HardOCP due to HardOCP not bowing down and taking it. That seems fairly significant to me in the context of this case.

      As for the point you make about NVidia, it's specious at best. NVidia isn't necessarily "happy" to be on the same press release. Infinium released that and NVidia released nothing of its own to accompany it. It's not a partnership either. Infinium bought (or committed to buy) a lot of NVidia cards; therefore they are a
    • Yeah I agree it's not a big deal. But HardOCP was also proving the point that Tim Roberts, is a con-artist. Remember Media Fusion anyone? The ability to send internet packets over the magnetic waves of the power lines? The guy that started Media Fusion, used advanced technical jargon, and his charsima, to make people invest in a technology that did not exist, but he sounded like he could do it, so investors invested. So all these poor people, heh, not really poor, but they get con'd into investing millions

    • Dude, they were suing people (Score:4, Funny)

      by Chris Burke (6130) on Wednesday January 05 2005, @12:01PM (#11264544) Homepage
      for putting publicly available but apparently embarassing information in a highly visible place.

      Are they as irrelevent now as SCO will be after they lose their case? Yes. Do I still want to hear about it when it happens so I can laugh at them? Yes. Yes I do.

      To Infinium Labs: Ha ha!
    • Mouse/keyboard is still my favorite controller combination. Way better IMO then controllers from X-Box or PS2.
    • They've already come up with this [infiniumlabs.com]; considered by many to be the only redeeming idea or product IL has produced. And I believe IL has explicitly stated they won't distribute it without the unit.
    • I agree about HardOCP, but regarding CEO's and good grammar ... actually, no, I wouldn't. It's a big problem in corporate America. The proper use of the English language, or even an understanding of why such usage is important, is gradually disappearing from the business world. I've found that is usually the big boss' secretary that knows how to write, and corrects any official correspondence he may spew forth. Emails, unfortunately, don't ordinarily come under such scrutiny, and more frequently resemble t

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