It’s a sad day over at Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch blog. In a posting Monday, Arrington announced that development of the CrunchPad, a 12-inch touchscreen Internet-connected tablet, has officially ended. “It was so close I could taste it,” Arrington wrote. “Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing.”
But the project “self-destructed,” Arrington said, because of “greed, jealousy and miscommunication.”
Chandra Rathakrishnan, CEO of TechCrunch’s partner on the project, Fusion Garage, informed Arrington in an e-mail that “based on pressure from his shareholders, he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement,” Arrington reported.
Enter the Lawyers
But Arrington said his company and Fusion Garage worked jointly on developing the prototypes for the device and expenses were shared. “We jointly own the CrunchPad product intellectual property, and we solely own the CrunchPad trademark. So it’s legally impossible for them to simply build and sell the device without our agreement,” Arrington asserted.
The two companies appear headed to court. An e-mail Rathakrishnan forwarded to Arrington proposes that Fusion Garage has the right to go forward with the project without TechCrunch, although it might consider purchasing rights to the trademark and name: “[W]e would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the CrunchPad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important, but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.”
“Without knowing anything about the inside politics here, this story reflects that Fusion Garage thinks they have a successful product on their hands,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Research. “They probably either thought TechCrunch’s involvement was going to mess it up or they’re just being greedy.”…