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I don't know about that.

I have been meditating a bit over the embossment/relief of the contents of this case; what stands out and what is in the background or not there at all so to say, and I get the impression that Cloanto seems to be carefully avoiding OS4 or Olsens "Boing Ball Branch" of version 3.1. As the registered copyright owner of the Commodore 3.1 version, which source code Olsens "Boing Ball Branch" (read: Hyperion published 3.1 and 4.x) builds on, Cloanto *are* a stakeholder in that as well, and they *could have* come down really hard on Hyperion based on this fact. But instead they are beating around the bush, they are like a surgeon carefully cutting marked tissue with precision with his scalpel. I get the impression they want the "Boing Ball Branch" to be able to live on and continue by not pissing people off too much.


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Copyright and trademarks are different in that you have to act actively to protect your trademark, if you don't you may lose it, and everyone knows this (including Hyperion and affiliated people) so they can't take a move like this overly personal. Copyrights OTOH doesn't require this, you can *choose* to look the other way on a case-by-case basis, without losing your copyright. You can chose to act now, never, or simply at a later time.

Everyone knows and understands that this lawsuit is Cloanto protecting their Amiga trademark (which is under opposition). As expected. But they are not going after the "Boing Ball Branch". Not in this particular case anyway. It may be a very possible outcome that when the trademark issues are solved, both Olsen and Hyperion (maybe separately) will be offered some deals regarding trademark+copyright for the Boing Ball Branch (3.1 and 4.x respectively). After all, Cloanto's mission and dedication has for *20 years* been to preserve the entire Commodore/Amiga culture and securing a future for it indefinitely, long after key people and companies have died, including potentially moving certain IP to a non-profit foundation (read about: A Discourse on Possible Amiga Futures).

Trying to kill off the "Boing Ball Branch" would go against everything Cloanto stands for, so that's very unlikely to happen IMHO, at least by Cloanto's hands (Hyperion's incompetence is another matter, that has been killing OS4 slowly for more than a decade). Also remember that Cloanto was key in bringing PowerUP emulation into UAE, making OS4 run on Amiga Forever (one product to run them all). This was probably the biggest sale success in OS4's history, counted in volume.

If Hyperion and/or OS4 would die (a more than probable outcome, were is the future anyway?), then Cloanto would probably do what they did with their "Workbench 3.X" in relation to Haage&Partner's "Amiga OS 3.9": They will contact each developer individually, negotiate copyrights to all components, and build a parallel clone of it.