TechCrunch Files Lawsuit Against Fusion Garage Intellectual Property Rights

Michael Arrington promised to file a lawsuit against JooJoo maker Fusion Garage after their CrunchPad partnership had fallen apart, while Fusion Garage CEO Chander Rathakrishnan promised that no intellectual property was taken from the TechCrunch founder. Now as promised Arrington is taking Fusion Garage to court.

Arrington on Wednesday filed suit against the manufacturer in a Northern District California Court. His complaint says that the CrunchPad (JooJoo) developer was involved in fraud, misappropriation of business ideas and basically “stealing” the project from TechCrunch.

According to Arrington, Ratharkrishanan’s current claims that Arrington owns no IP is incorrect and the TechCrunch founder states that blueprints and much of the devices other IP were originated by Pegatron, the original planned manufacturer for the device.

In true Arrington fashion TechCrunch has launched character attacks against Rathakrishnan, stating that he’s plagiarized content and erased their blog to hide contradictory statements. They also claim that the company is funded by “unsavory” creditors. He has also tried to persuade media companies from linking to the JooJoo pre-order page. In case you missed that he doesn’t want you to CLICK HERE. He says they don’t have the money to build the devices, however in our last interview with Chander he talked about new funding, bringing the total raised to $3 million.

Here’s what we don’t understand, why didn’t a “businessman” like Arrington have contracts in place? Also, he blames Singapore press for not mentioning Rathakrishnan’s previous company failure, however Chander in a web conference last week talked about the failure of that company in a very matter of fact way that any blog who chose to could have reported on.

Not surprisingly the suit asks for a preliminary injunction of the JooJoo from being sold until the case comes to an end. It should be interesting to see all of the contracts, proof of verbal obligations and other “proof” that Arrington can provide.

Here’s my question to Arrington, why did you get into business in the first place with a businessman you appear to have known nothing about, while continuing the relationship when as you put it money was raised by using “unsavory creditors.” You also claim that much of the IP, if in fact true, was taken from another manufacturer? If you knew that fact you had an obligation to address it during the build process. It seems to me that more than one side may have been guilty of unsavory business.