Ben Hermans, managing-partner of Hyperion Entertainment

"I am not defaming anybody's character, I have not even identified a specific person." (Benjamin Hermans)

Ben Hermans claims Hyperion has no problem with MorphOS:

• 2001 02 15: "Why would I be worried ?" MorphOS "means more potential sales for us."
• 2001 02 17: "We obviously are not in competition with MorphOS because we don't produce any operating systems, just games and 1 application."

Winter 2001: the AmigaOS4 operating system is now developed by Hyperion Entertainment.

Ben Hermans claims MorphOS violates Amiga Inc's intellectual property:

• 2001 11 04: "In my opinion a a lawyer, MorphOS violates the intellectual property of Amiga Inc for which they paid 4.5 million dollar."
• 2001 11 04: "The failure of Amiga Inc and the MorphOS team to come to terms is in part due to the fact that Amiga wants to assert their ownership and intellectual property rights over the Amiga OS (for which they paid 4.5 M USD) whilst the MorphOS team happily continues to refute those claims"

Ben Hermans claims MorphOS is illegaly using the non-open AmigaOS source code:

• 2001 11 04: "It's a well known fact that the MorphOS people are using the OS 3.1 source-code."
• 2001 11 04: "The MorphOS Team is 'recompiling OS 3.0/OS 3.1 source-code'"

Ben Hermans claims MorphOS is illegal because of unfair and parasitic competition:

• 2002 04 15: "as long as MorphOS allows for OS 3.x to be installed and OS 3.x compatible products to be run, it will constitute 'unfair and parasitic competition' under German law."
• 2002 04 15: "Amiga's case against MorphOS is rock solid under German and EU law at least unless they make sure that all compatibility with AmigaOS is removed and that it is no longer marketed with ANY reference to AmigaOS veiled or otherwise."
• 2002 04 15: "Wine and Windows target the same hardware. OS 3.x and MorphOS don't. That's one of the reasons it's illegal."
• 2002 04 15: "But like I said, it's really the 'unfair and parasitic competition' law that nails MorphOS in Germany."
• 2002 04 27: "Marketing and advertising a compatible product by reference to the original constitutes unfair and parasitic competition. No matter how MorphOS was developed (by decompilation or otherwise) as long as that's what they are doing, it will remain illegal."

Ben Hermans claims MorphOS is illegal but doesn't give any reason:

• 2002 04 11: "MorphOS: is a product which is considered to be illegal by Amiga Inc."
• 2002 04 24: "No, it's been made clear that Amiga considers MorphOS an illegal product."

Ben Hermans suggests MorphOS will be sued:

• 2001 11 09: "Seriously guys, I hope you have some better legal arguments about the legality of MorphOS or you are in deep trouble."
• 2001 11 11: When replying to "You may want to cover your ass a bit more. There is no OS code in MorphOS. What you do *is* libel.", Mister Hermans writes "Let's find out."
• 2002 04 15: "let's find out what the judge in Frankfurt has to say."

MorphOS was released in 2003:

• Amiga Inc never engaged any legal action against it.
• Ben Hermans and Hyperion never engaged any legal action against it.
• No judge in Frankfurt ever said anything about it.
• No entity or person ever sued MorphOS in any country.
• Ben Hermans never offered any apology.

After 10 years, Ben Hermans continues to suggest MorphOS is illegally based on AmigaOS source code:

• 2011 10 28: "Hyperion is using the original Commodore source-code which can be traced back to the very beginning. Nobody else can (openly) claim the same"
• 2014 07 30: "Just because they cater for other "variants" of AmigaOS (not based on original source-code although there is some debate about that), does not exclude them from supporting the project."

Today, MorphOS is still compatible with AmigaOS applications and legally distributed. On the other hand, Amiga Inc sued Hyperion...

This guy really wrote too much bullshit on all existing web sites... More to come.

<< Back