Not looking too good here - how could the IP have been...

Not looking too good here - how could the IP have been "quarantined" as Pickup claims, when RMA contracted MSO first, with similar scope of work..........looks to me like MSO has tried to flog to the highest bidder under a Video Sleazy approach...........only to end up in Federal Court. Not great news - looking to get more info ex the courts as MSO was out there touting that It was SUING RMA - which in fact is not the case - MSO is the Defendant along with Tom Simms

Part of article below

DIGITAL MEDIA
ReelTime takes Video Ezy developer
Mobilesoft to court Australian movie downloads company ReelTime is taking on Video Ezy developer Mobilesoft in a court case over the
intellectual property behind Video Ezy’s new home media centre (HMC) set-top box.
According to ReelTime, Mobilesoft was originally
developing the product with ReelTime engineers and after a development contract was cancelled, Mobilesoft allegedly used the technology in a new contract with Video Ezy.
“We have a claim which has now been quantified, and it’s a very substantial one,” said a legal spokesperson for ReelTime, “running in the several millions of dollars in damages.”
“As a result of the ‘who made the set-top box’, at the
present time we are concerned about the fact that our
intellectual property, of which we have half, now appears... there’s a possibility that it has been used for the development of their next technology,” said the legal spokesperson. “So we’re saying that we are seeking further information about the specifications of the set top box which they have announced with Video Ezy, and to determine if there is any similarity or use of the technology which is part ours.”
“So there’s a dispute over who owns the intellectual
property, now, it’s up to the courts to determine who owns it, obviously we wouldn’t be in court unless we felt we had some claim to the intellectual property,” said Managing Director John Karantzis. “Certainly in terms of delivery of content via electronic means, ReelTime has been at the forefront of licensing it and making it happen, Mobilesoft and Video Ezy have not been. So one’s a bricks and mortar business, the other has been in the gambling industry.”

“Until we came along and contracted who we believed was a software and hardware design company in Mobilesoft, they hadn’t even heard of IPTV, let alone have the capacity to have developed the intellectual property to so-called ‘deliver’ a box to Video Ezy. So we believe that we have a strong claim in court,” said Karantzis.
Last month, Mobilesoft announced the order of 10,000
home media centre set top boxes from Video Ezy, to the tune of $4.5 million. Video Ezy has been trialling the system in 40 Sydney homes since late last year, and planned to roll out the system in 2007. Video Ezy franchisees were recently shown the HMC at a company conference, but as yet have not been told details of a release date for the system. According to Video Ezy general manager Andrew Gardiner, ReelTime’s court
action has not affected the delayed release of the HMC.
But the case has not stopped ReelTime from going ahead with its own plans for a home media centre.
“We signed some technology agreements with Microsoft,
whereby if we conform with the Microsoft ecosystem, then the advantages we’ve got is to all the Microsoft devices that hang off the ecosystem,” said Karantzis. He mentioned Microsoft’s gaming console the Xbox 360 along with “more of their devices.”
“We already interoperate with PDA style devices using
Windows Mobile. So the technology agreements with
Microsoft have probably been more beneficial in the long term than the original route we were planning,” said Karantzis.
Video Ezy directed all comment on the proceedings to
Mobilesoft. Mobilesoft’s chief operating officer Rodney
Pickup said that while Mobilesoft is unable to comment on the ongoing legal dispute, the company says that any of ReelTime’s intellectual property was “quarantined a long, long, long time ago,” and claims that the Video Ezy HMC is an “entirely different delivery system” to ReelTime’s model.
Luke Coleman – Communications Day