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.