Ed Goff
Lawyer - employed by ESCOM and Amiga Technologies GmbH
My name is Ed Goff. I'm a Philadelphia lawyer working with Escom and
Amiga technologies GmbH, on a wide variety of issues related to the
re-launch of Amigas.
In particular, I will talk today on issues of Licensing.
Our strategy will be somewhat different than the strategy that you saw
from Commodore in the past. It is our intention to have strategic program
for Amigas that will be as open as possible, and which will therefore
drive the Amiga technology into as wide a range of products and
applications as possible.
First I would like to discuss the broadest type of licensing arrangements
that will fit within our plan, Strategic alliances. We intend to
consummate arragements for further development of the Amiga technologies
together with strategic partners. These partners may be one or more well
known names in the electronics and telecommunications industries.
Together with the strategic partner or partners we intend to fund further
development of new and advanced products based partly on Amiga and partly
on proprietary and public systems provided by the strategic partner.
Unfortunately I am not at liberty at this time to discuss or even identify
potential strategic partners, as some of these discussions are at a very
early stage. However you can understand that these strategic arrangements
often take the form of joint ventures, cross- licenses, cost and
risk-sharing agreements, and capital arrangements. As a result we can
only announce the nature of such a strategic arrangement consistent with
the wishes of the strategic partner at the time the arrangement is
finalized.
A second area of Licensing that falls within our strategic framework for a
more open Amiga is embedded technology. We are currently pursuing
opportunities for licensing the Amiga technology or portions of it to
enterprises in there industries who will embed the Amiga in their
products. One example of this sort of arrangement is VisCorp, a potential
maker of TV set-top boxes. As you have heard or may hear from my
colleagues, it is our belief that the Amiga presents uniquely attractive
and cost effective solutions to enterprises attempting to meet the
specifications of the telecommunications and cable industries. It is our
belief that encouraging vendors in these markets to embed Amiga
capabilities or features could be very exciting, and hopefully rewarding.
In this regard I encourage you to make our intentions known as widely as
possible so that we can get the broadest possible spectrum of embedded
technology licensees.
A third and less grandiose area of licensing involves people and companies
who are already using the technology covered by the portfolio of patents
copyrights and trademarks now owned by Escom. Often this area can be
unpleasant because some of these folks have never recognised in any formal
way their use of the technology. We intend to review a wide variety of
products and components with a view to developing a licensing arrangement
with their makers, users and sellers. At the moment, this is an uncharted
area. It requires fairly intensive reviews, and often difficult
discussions. For that reason, I am unable to give you further details on
potential licensees at this time.