Author: FatRakoon (79-121-141-25.xln.managedbroadband.co.uk)
Date: 12-31-2008 22:28
But even in a claim for lost revenue, the ammount that the owners can claim is only the ammount that the given software sells for...
In the cases of Atari software, they can only claim for Magic ( I know I paid £99.99 for mine and I got magic 6.0 and Jinnee 2.5 ) and Im sure that Magic on its own was £69.99 so thats all they can claim for, even if they were to win.
But, they would also have to prove that they lost out too!
Of course the case you pointed out is completely different to the next case, each is different but I must ask, what happened with the case?
The court said the software was NOT dead, then they must have stopped the other party from doing anythign with the software... They could not be allowed if the software was not deemed DEAD, even if Dammaged could not be agreed on.
I used to code a lot in my younger years, and have developed and helped to develop many many games and programs on the Commodore 16 and 64 machines, very few on the Atari unfortunately, but I was ripped off by a couple of big companies, who had stolen my software and simply hacked them to display someone else's name.
These companies are OCEAN, MASTERTRONIC, GREMLIN GRAPHICS and MALBOURNE HOUSE.
I can openly say their names as I won them in court and got bot ha nic etidy sum plus percentages of sales ( Im not allowed to give a figure, but I bought my parents house when I was 13 lets just say that )
Anyway, my solicitor advisd me to not only post softwrae to these companies to ask if they would prmote them for you, but also post the same to him. this included documentation, source code as well as working copies, and basically everythign that I could. These were naturally stamped by the post office and obviously dated and were delivered to the solicitors who, did not open the packages up.
When we took these companies to court, we were then able to open up the packages in court and provide all proof that dates to before the games were released that had printouts and source and object code, with all my own notes and work. these turds completely got the shock of their lives.
So, I have had closer then first hand experience in the court system when it comes to software and taking people and the big companies to court.
Of course, as I said everythign is different and since that happened, there has ben oh so many changes to the aw and how copyright protection and patents etc are handled, so who knows.
But in general terms, if software is no longer sold, then the owners must be able to prove loss of revenue in order to sue. If they cannot, then they dont have a leg to stand on.
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