The Crunchpad under an alternative alias/name from Fusion Garage made its debut this morning, under the appropriately named JooJoo. JooJoo in the urban dictionary means “bad karma” or bad luck.
Being part of the Monday Morning Drama – Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan showed off the new JooJoo system that is the Crunchpad as originally envisioned by Techcrunch and Michael Arrington. The good part is that the price is back down to $299.00 according to Venture Beat, but there are also other price points like $499.00 and more. The saga is ongoing right now with live coverage of the event on Engadget and more information on Gizmodo for those who want to follow the story.
Realistically though this is something to worry about – regardless of who is really driving the car on this and what the story sounds like, Techcrunch got the PR message out first. It was unfortunate of Fusion Garage to wait until Monday when TC had nearly a week’s head start on the issue. The courts will be the ones who decide who is right and who is wrong, not battling PR folks or responses from various companies on their blogs.
The Crunchpad/JooJoo makes its appearance today, but expect this one to be locked up in the courts. There will be an injunction if this device hits the streets that will keep Fusion Garage from doing anything with the device no matter how the process is portrayed by Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan. That is what will make this interesting – the idea of running with the hardware is not new, this kind of thing has happened too many times in business before. What will be something to see will be how the courts react to this. Techcrunch should easily be able to get an injunction against the device being sold anywhere.
This is going to be a story that will play out over the next year, leaving ample room for anyone like Apple to come along and dent the market. It does not matter who came first, what this has done is left the market wide open to Apple if they choose to make something like this.
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(Cross-posted @ TechWag)
Dan,
I think it is much more muddier than we have been told. Mike Arrington, being a lawyer, should have had the paperwork done properly. If he had his paperwork correct, I am 100% sure he would have posted it first on the blog. I think he is on the weak grounds here. I expect the story to eventually die down. If Mike keeps it alive one way or other, he will be indirectly doing a favor to Fusion Garage in terms of branding. There are way too many people who think Mike is nuts. He will help Fusion Garage sell to these audience. With mass media like LA Times following the story, he will be unnecessarily be giving exposure to Fusion Garage by keeping this controversy alive.