History of the AmigaOS 4 dispute

The following history of the AmigaOS 4 dispute documents the legal battle mainly between the companies Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion Entertainment over the Operating System AmigaOS 4. On 30 September 2009, Hyperion and Amiga, Inc. reached a settlement agreement where Hyperion was granted an exclusive, perpetual and worldwide right to distribute and use 'The Software', a term used during the dispute and subsequent settlement to refer to source code from AmigaOS 3 and earlier, and ownership of AmigaOS 4.x and beyond.

After Commodore filed for bankruptcy in 1994, its name and IP rights, including Amiga, were sold to Escom. Escom kept the Amiga products and sold the Commodore name on to Tulip Computers. Escom went bankrupt in 1997 and sold the Amiga IP to Gateway 2000 (now only Gateway). On 27 December 1999, Gateway sold the Amiga name and rights to Amino Development, who changed the company name to Amiga, Inc. once the assets had been acquired. The 'Amino' Amiga, Inc. and the 'KMOS' Amiga, Inc. are seen by Hyperion as legally distinct entities, contracts to one are of no relevance to the other.

Hyperion Entertainment has released AmigaOS 4 (OS4) to the public in 2004. The five year development process led to accusations of vapourware and producing a modern PowerPC OS, given that Hyperion claimed that they had the original AmigaOS 3.1 source code to reference (a claim later proven accurate). This was made worse by the apparent much more rapid progress and maturity of competitor and alternative AmigaOS clone MorphOS, which had been begun several years earlier. Perhaps the most important feature of OS4 as regards the legal dispute is the presence of an entirely new PowerPC native kernel. ExecSG replaces the original Amiga Exec and is claimed entirely the work and property of Hyperion's subcontracted developers Thomas and Hans-Joerg Frieden. Neither Amiga, Inc. nor Hyperion actually own ExecSG, so technically cannot demand or hand it over, leaving the OS with fragmented and confused ownership.

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