HardOCP Wins Against Infinium Labs

An anonymous reader writes "HardOCP has won a huge legal round against Infinium Labs. The WhereIsPhantom website has all the details, straight from the court dockets. There is a list of orders a mile long for Infinium Labs and owner Tim Roberts to comply with by Sept. 30th."

I like [H]ard OCP

[category_five]

I like [H]ard OCP because they stay true to their roots and post mostly about motherboards and stories interesting to the [H]ardware community while other hardware sites are now posting useless reviews of webcams, PDA's and wireless routers which have little to do with making your game machine be all it can be.(anandtech and tomshardwareguide).

I guess it's too late

[miikrr]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14577 Damn I hope that company dies.

Re:0 posts

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Sarasota and I do have to say the sign is pretty cool. Also, if you really want to you can hop on their WiFi network, they must not think WAP is any good.

Re:Can we just ignore infinium

[Anonymous Coward]

> Isn't this company/product the original vapor
> ware. Comments... Even the website is vapor.

Hmmm, the Infinium Labs website is actually very
well done and professional so I don't know what
you mean by a "vapor" website. But besides that,
could someone explain what the uproar about this
company is about? It seems the "slashdot"
community has had a bug in it's ass about the
company from day one. What gives? I don't know
anything about this company but looking at its
product literture it seems that they have a good
idea and the latest incarnation of the product is
actually pretty nice. So, someone please
enlighten me.

Re:what this is all about. (informative)

[mabhatter654]

Kyle called "bullshit" back in september of last year. Don't know why, but Kyle wrote a ripping piece on them from out of nowhere...maybe they had some of his money!! [haha] but for some reason they pulled his chain and he went digging...and found free and clear public knowlage that they weren't what they said they were...hell their stated office address at the time was a vacant rundown store!

For some reason they tried to sue HIM to take the article down like 4 months later!!! He corrected matters of fact...silly stuff that didn't change any of the article's real information. They tried to drag him to court in Florida...so he "counter" sued in Texas court [where Kyle lives and supposedly they had an office also!] to have a case dismissed... they then preceded to sue him again.

I can't say why this is such a big deal. The only thing I can see is that Roberts appears to be a serial "scammer" [but then 50% of VC seekers are anyway] and it was just too easy a target for Kyle to pass up...and if you read the forums or letters replys, Kyle LOVES a good Flame war! can you say recipe for trouble!!!

Re:0 posts

[Anonymous Coward]

I found these pictures on the Infinium Labs Forums site:

At Night [phantom.net]

In the Day [phantom.net]

Color changing signs cost $300k?

Peace

Re:Can we just ignore infinium

[sahrss]

"Infinium are trying to pull off something very difficult from a business perspective and Hard[OCP] stuck the boot in..."

What the hell? Where did you come from? Nice misinformation. Go read some of the evidence in these threads:

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/27/ 1430211&tid=123&tid=127&tid=10 [slashdot.org]
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/04/ 0017209&tid=123&tid=127&tid=10 [slashdot.org]

-1 Troll. Mods, this guy made another comment here: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=122123&c id=10273433 [slashdot.org]

Infinium wants to be on the ASE...

[Artifex]

I wonder how these lawsuits are going to look in their planned filing [phantom.net] with the American Stock Exchange [amex.com]?

Re:Can we just ignore infinium

[Rakishi]

Yes, HardOCP sued first instead of buckling under the threats and taking the piece of their website. They were being threatened with lawsuits and they sued to have a judgment made, ie: "You're threatening to sue us, well let's see if a judge thinks you have any ground to stand on."
Isn't it odd: someone fighting back when a company threatens to sue them?

The ultimate evil plan against the Phantom

[British]

Here's a fun idea.

1. get a linux system together with some good hardware. Make it mini-itx
2. Take out all non-game-console-specific stuff out. Make it a small distro
3. Buy a game controller from the store, get drivers working for it
4. Setup some crude kiosk frontend that might be what the Phantom would have
5. Install MAME on it or something and pretend the arcade ROMs ae the games Phantom would be selling(this is just an example)
6. Put a fancy plastic case around it.

Then realize you have some crude implmentation of what might have been a Phantom console, only for the cost of hardware, and people's free time to slap together a fancy front end with a Linux engine(not unlike TiVo)

7. wait for lawsuits from Infinium labs to roll in saying you copied their idea

8. brag about it on here and HardOCP. They have a plastic box and hype, you have a somewhat crude , working implementation of what they have promised, but never delivered.

Whee

Boilerroom

[threedays]

Has anyone else been getting spam promoting the purchase of infinium labs stock? Too lazy to look for one of them, but its on one of those non sec stock markets.

Has infinium turned into one of those fake boilerroom companies, with some people trying to cash out real quick?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Can we just ignore infinium

[nursedave]

First, I am not pro-hardOCP. I am just anti-stupid.

Second, I am not pretending it was factual; it was factual. I did read the article, and I presume you have, too. Does it not bother you that the "company" received mail at a Mailboxes, ETC. type place for 8 months, after securing some $25 million in funding? That when they did claim to get an office, someone checked and it was vacant? Dude, all these things SCREAM scam; factor in the fact that the CEO has a history of such shadiness, and it was a vital piece serving the public interest, not a hatchet piece. I'd hope such activities would always be brought to the attention of people who might think of investing or purchasing something like this.

Third, your remark on suing in Texas was hardly a neutral observation, you made your own assumptions, which you have the right to do, but please, don't call it neutral and insult our intelligence. And that remark didn't make sense anyway - Kyle lives in Texas, Infinium had a business presence in Texas - where the hell should Kyle have files suit? Alabama? I'm in Texas, and if I want to sue Cocacola, I'm doing it right here.

Re:Can we just ignore infinium

[Disevidence]

Either a) You work for Infinium
b) You're related to someone who works for them
c) You're sleeping with someone who works their

OCP basically reported facts, straight down the line, they didn't misrepresent anything (please point out where, in specific detail, they did?)

You're the only one posting bullshit around here, mate.

I applied for a job with them

[TiggertheMad]

..right when this whole feud started. They seemed like nice enough people. The were set up in temp offices in Seattle's bank of America building. Most of the PMs are ex-Microsoft (No MS jokes please, we are torching IL right now...) and at the time they were looking to hire a ton of people. They had the hardware done (Although I never saw it, being a first interiew), and were looking at the software delivery system. The ranking manager came off as a bit odd, but I didn't get and sense of shysters trying to pull a fast one or clueless idiots who couldn't pull it off. If all the negative press about the president being totally evil/inept isn't true, I'd give the console a fifty percent chance of seeing the light of day.

The guys I talked to even thought that PA's shot at them was funny, so they have a sense of humor about all the press. I'm sort of glad I wasn't offered a job, though. Too much wierd stuff was happening.

The Phantom at E3 2004

[MrGeck]

I saw the Phantom at E3 2004. Played it for a little bit. I've never seen a system get that much of a poor reception anywhere, ever, by anyone. It was funny as hell to see them try to explain it crashing so much and they wouldn't show us the "cool things it could do" that they kept talking about. They did have the biggest individual booth of the show, though. Maybe they thought gamers had no standards?

Here's my two cents...

[Anita Coney]

Originally Tim Roberts intended to bilk a bunch of investors by pretending to create a gaming console, spending the money, then getting out of dodge. As HardOCP has pointed out, he's done that before.

However, the online gaming community took notice and started asking real questions, e.g., where is an actual product? What companies will actually be writing games? Etc.

Suddenly Roberts had to prove to the investors, and to future investors that the console was real, so he was forced to hire Kevin Bachus, former Microsoft Xbox employee. And worse of all for Roberts, he was actually forced to create a real product.

Now that the online gaming community has put Roberts in a spotlight, he is no longer free to lurk in the dark. Now he's forced to either admit it was a scam or to go forward and fail with an asinine business plan. Mmmm... I wonder what he'll do?!

Re:0 posts

[Zeriel]

I was more interested in the fact that half the ports on the back weren't connected to anything inside the case. THAT seems like a scam job to me.

Link to the orginal HardOCP article

[dlapine]

Here's the link to the orignal HardOCP article detailing their investigation.
Link to Original HardOCP article [hardocp.com]
This looks a good piece of investigative journalism by a website. Kudos to them for providing the public an unbiased set of facts.