Fusion Garage rebrands the CrunchPad as the JooJoo and defends itself
Chandra Rathakrishnan of Fusion Garage held a press conference today that gave him the platform to give his company’s side of the CrunchPad debacle, and to introduce the product under its new name, the JooJoo.
Last week we reported that Michael Arrington, CEO of TechCrunch, had officially said the CrunchPad, the long talked about Internet tablet, was dead due to Fusion Garage kicking them out of the deal. Mr. Arrington has gone on to say that Fusion Garage would try launching the product without them, but would be legally blocked as all Intellectual Properties (IPs) were jointly owned, and that neither company could progress on the product.
It was later announced that Fusion Garage would have a press conference today to state its side of the story, which prompted Mr. Arrington to write a post about how legal action was imminent against its former partners in the device. This post included reproductions of the last round of emails between Mr. Arrington and Chandra Rathakrishnan of Fusion Garage, as well as letters from the law firm Mr. Arrington has hired.
Now we come to the press conference held today, and Mr. Rathakrishnan’s side of the story. According to him, his company was already working on a tablet when Mr. Arrington wrote his post about his dream of a simple tablet that could sell for $200. Mr. Rathakrishnan saw this post and contacted Mr. Arrington about a device Fusion Garage was working on and possibly they could work together on it. The two gentleman met, and, according to Mr. Rathakrishnan, Mr. Arrington promised all sorts of things that he never delivered on. He says that Mr. Arrington promised them funding, hardware help and the possibility that TechCrunch would acquire Fusion Garage.
As time dragged on, Mr. Rathakrishnan says that Mr. Arrington never delivered on any of his promises beyond setting up a separate company named CrunchPad which the acquisition was to happen through. Talks of the buy out continued, and then slowly reduced to a partnership to which Mr. Rathakrishnan says they presented Mr. Arrington with a proposal that he rejected because it did not give him controlling interest. It was at this point that Fusion Garage decided it no longer needed TechCrunch involved in the process.
Mr. Rathakrishnan stated numerous times through out the press conference that at no time were any contracts signed between the two companies, and that the only thing TechCrunch brought to the deal was the name CrunchPad. It was stated numerous times through out the press conference that Fusion Garage owns all of the IPs involved with the device except for the name CrunchPad, and that is why the name has now been changed to the JooJoo.
Fusion Garage plans to launch the JooJoo this coming Friday at TheJooJoo.com for a price of $499, which Mr. Rathakrishnan said the $200 price Mr. Arrington floated numerous times was never even possible. The first shipments will happen in 8 to 10 weeks after those initial orders are placed.
As for the device, it features a 12.1″ touch screen capable of working in landscape or portrait modes along with a 4 GB Solid State Drive. There are no physical buttons beyond the power switch, and it is capable of displaying high definition videos. A fully charged battery should keep you going for 5 hours while using the Wi-Fi, but no comment on how much video would drain the power.
So, who is correct in this story? As the old saying goes, the truth usually resides somewhere in the middle, but one thing on Mr. Rathakrishnan’s side is that Mr. Arrington has not presented any contracts as evidence in his posts. Even if it was a blacked out contract, that would go a long way in supporting his claims, but he has not yet done so. Mr. Rathakrishnan was adamant that no contracts were ever signed between the two companies, and the fact that none have shown up online yet seems to add some weight to his claims.
Only time, and court cases, will really sort out this mess.
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December 7th, 2009
I think I would buy one just BECAUSE of how badly the situation has been handled. The most blog hyped device since the “Apple phone”, be fun to have an original.