Ceton vs. Gibson Lawsuit

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IownFIVEechos

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#21

Post by IownFIVEechos » Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:06 pm

kingwr wrote:
STC wrote:If the court rules in favour of Ceton all expenses will be taken care of. Plus some...
Yeah, and monkeys may fly out of my butt. Keep living in that naive world. The only folks that will make out in this deal are the lawyers.

In my short time frequenting these forum's I have learned one can never win an argument that has any negative tone towards Ceton. It is best to just let them keep making false promises. At least a big company is calling them on it now. We have no say we are too small. Can't wait for the Xbox one to offer DVR capabilities from Ceton they just need 'Microsoft' to open it up for them right? Probably see it around Christmas from past experience. Long live CETON!

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#22

Post by STC » Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:17 pm

Erkotz' post here was to show that Ceton are putting forward a counter claim. IF they are successful then they will be awarded damages.
Surely that is a fair response by any Company should they believe they are being wrongfully sued.

Not being able to see the actual contract I'm not sure any of us should be judge and jury.

Innocent until proven guilty? It seems quite a few members here have already applied their decision with added negative bias.
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#23

Post by IownFIVEechos » Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:23 pm

STC wrote:Erkotz' post here was to show that Ceton are putting forward a counter claim. IF they are successful then they will be awarded damages.
Surely that is a fair response by any Company should they believe they are being wrongfully sued.

Not being able to see the actual contract I'm not sure any of us should be judge and jury.

Innocent until proven guilty? It seems quite a few members here have already applied their decision with added negative bias.

Mine is just by judging the prior actions on a consumer level, it does not help their case (IMO). But that is just by my experience, what do I know! :) I am just sour over not having an update for the echo. Does anyone else here hear the 'Law and Order' Ba Bang ring tone right now? BTW, if the MB3 tv add on works out, my echos will become hockey pucks!
Last edited by IownFIVEechos on Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Bryan

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#24

Post by Bryan » Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:13 pm

The history of the Echo doesn't mean Ceton did anything wrong as far as Gibson is concerned. I don't own an Echo, and yes, based on reviews I probably won't, but as an InfiniTV owner and an MMC user, I'm a happy Ceton customer, and would agree with STC in that there's a lot of assumed guilt around here. Personally, I do hope they're cleared, but I'm not going to pass judgement on this based on the infiniTV, the Echo, or the word of Gibson or Ceton.

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#25

Post by IownFIVEechos » Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:16 pm

Bryan wrote:The history of the Echo doesn't mean Ceton did anything wrong as far as Gibson is concerned. I don't own an Echo, and yes, based on reviews I probably won't, but as an InfiniTV owner and an MMC user, I'm a happy Ceton customer, and would agree with STC in that there's a lot of assumed guilt around here. Personally, I do hope they're cleared, but I'm not going to pass judgement on this based on the infiniTV, the Echo, or the word of Gibson or Ceton.
The good news for both parties dealing with this is that our opinions don't matter. Sometimes it feels good to vent? No one ever said they are guilty. Just said (meant) I would not be shocked by it if it was true since their practices seemed shady at times. And by shady I mean; I know I bought more product when the famous announcement came out, and I know many others kept them right at the return cut off window. And the silence, ohh how we loved the silence! I want them to be cleared too! I want another ECHO update!!

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#26

Post by STC » Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:35 pm

^ If you want your nick changed I can certainly help :D
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#27

Post by IownFIVEechos » Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:39 pm

STC wrote:^ If you want your nick changed I can certainly help :D

I will keep that in mind :) Thank you kindly.

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#28

Post by kingwr » Fri Jan 17, 2014 9:22 pm

IownFIVEechos wrote:In my short time frequenting these forum's I have learned one can never win an argument that has any negative tone towards Ceton.
My post wasn't negative towards Ceton, it was negative towards lawyers :)

Seriously, I didn't read Gibson's complaint or Ceton's reply, but I can certainly tell you what it says:

I. Everything Gibson said in their complaint is baloney.
II. In fact, Gibson was mean to us causing us $X in damages; and
III. We ask the court to 1) dismiss Gibson's false and frivolous claims; 2) award us $X in damages on our counterclaims arising from Gibson's outrageous and malicious behavior; and 3) to the extent allowed by law, award us court and attorneys' fees.

This is just the standard move in response to your opponents opener -- it doesn't have anything to do with the strength of their claim or yours. It's just a chess game.

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#29

Post by lithium630 » Fri Jan 17, 2014 9:38 pm

IownFIVEechos wrote:
Bryan wrote:The history of the Echo doesn't mean Ceton did anything wrong as far as Gibson is concerned. I don't own an Echo, and yes, based on reviews I probably won't, but as an InfiniTV owner and an MMC user, I'm a happy Ceton customer, and would agree with STC in that there's a lot of assumed guilt around here. Personally, I do hope they're cleared, but I'm not going to pass judgement on this based on the infiniTV, the Echo, or the word of Gibson or Ceton.
The good news for both parties dealing with this is that our opinions don't matter. Sometimes it feels good to vent? No one ever said they are guilty. Just said (meant) I would not be shocked by it if it was true since their practices seemed shady at times. And by shady I mean; I know I bought more product when the famous announcement came out, and I know many others kept them right at the return cut off window. And the silence, ohh how we loved the silence! I want them to be cleared too! I want another ECHO update!!
I don't see anything shady. They tried to make a good product and it didn't work out. I wasn't happy about it myself either especially given the initial price. I think it is fair to criticize the final product, but not to imply there was any bad intent. Ceton is made up of good people (from what I can see) who have been an asset to the shrinking Media Center community. Time to move on.

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#30

Post by dabretty » Fri Jan 17, 2014 11:14 pm

I think the negative tone here - perceived as anti-Ceton - is because we don't hear squat from them, receive no updates ... and yet they stop by to show us their countersuit in an ongoing legal case. It shouldn't be a surprise that more than a few of us see that in a negative light.

What's that old saying? If you can't innovate, litigate? I hope that's not all Ceton has left in the tank.

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#31

Post by lithium630 » Fri Jan 17, 2014 11:51 pm

dabretty wrote:I think the negative tone here - perceived as anti-Ceton - is because we don't hear squat from them, receive no updates ... and yet they stop by to show us their countersuit in an ongoing legal case. It shouldn't be a surprise that more than a few of us see that in a negative light.

What's that old saying? If you can't innovate, litigate? I hope that's not all Ceton has left in the tank.
Calling people shady is insulting. It has nothing to do with perception. I don't see an issue with them responding to the lawsuit discussing. There is no relationship with that and the Echo. I definitely agree there should be more information about the future of the Echo.

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#32

Post by dabretty » Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:46 am

lithium630 wrote: Calling people shady is insulting. It has nothing to do with perception. I don't see an issue with them responding to the lawsuit discussing. There is no relationship with that and the Echo. I definitely agree there should be more information about the future of the Echo.
I don't mean to put words into the mouth of "El Cinco" with regards to his use of the word "shady", but I don't see how it's exactly out-of-bounds in terms of Ceton's due criticism. Attempting to help sales of a faltering product by pushing blog and forum posts suggesting an "early Christmas present," and then the Android preview (right before the return window expires) - and to never deliver Android *or even a single non-Android update* thereafter - is probably viewed by a lot of customers as a deceptive business practice, at best. You certainly don't build goodwill with customers this way. To then label a customer (of five units!) as being over the top in his criticism by calling them "shady" seems like the crazier offense to me.

As far as we know, they might not have spent a dollar working on this thing since last March, when the last firmware came out. I'm really not normally a conspiracy guy (I swear!), but seriously ... the Android thing could have been a complete hoax, and we'd never have any way of knowing. Maybe they discovered that they were screwed by their chipset vendor choice *after* buying 100k units, and subsequently had a meeting where they scripted the entire next year of falsehoods in order to recover as much of their loss as they could. We'll never know, because they haven't produced crap and they're still not talking. All I know is I'm an end-result guy, and all we've heard from this company in the last 4-5 months is about how great of a countersuit they have against Gibson. Congratulations, tech company that once showed soooo much potential.

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#33

Post by reggie14 » Sat Jan 18, 2014 7:03 pm

kingwr wrote:
IownFIVEechos wrote:In my short time frequenting these forum's I have learned one can never win an argument that has any negative tone towards Ceton.
My post wasn't negative towards Ceton, it was negative towards lawyers :)

Seriously, I didn't read Gibson's complaint or Ceton's reply, but I can certainly tell you what it says:

I. Everything Gibson said in their complaint is baloney.
II. In fact, Gibson was mean to us causing us $X in damages; and
III. We ask the court to 1) dismiss Gibson's false and frivolous claims; 2) award us $X in damages on our counterclaims arising from Gibson's outrageous and malicious behavior; and 3) to the extent allowed by law, award us court and attorneys' fees.

This is just the standard move in response to your opponents opener -- it doesn't have anything to do with the strength of their claim or yours. It's just a chess game.
That's remarkably close to what Ceton's brief says. I'd kind of like to see Gibson's complaint, but it doesn't appear to be online for free anywhere, and I don't feel like creating a PACER account and paying a few bucks to get it.

I tend to believe everything in Ceton's countersuit, in part because it doesn't make them look very good. I mean, it doesn't sound like they did anything legally wrong, but it seems pretty foolish to devote significant resources to a project without a pretty solid agreement with any partners. Ceton's countersuit argument seems pretty weak. By their own admission, they started work knowing that they didn't have important details worked out with Gibson. They were willing to do so, presumably, because they didn't have to front any money themselves- Gibson was paying Ceton's development costs during this time. The "damages" incurred by Ceton are essentially just the opportunity cost of devoting time to a failed effort. That seems rather weak, particularly given that Ceton appears to go in knowing that there was a possibility the business arrangements would fall through.

I'm by no means a lawyer, but if I was on a jury I think I'd be hard-pressed to award anyone damages in this case. It sounds like both Gibson and Ceton made some bad management/business decisions, and now they're engaged in a spitting contest in the courts, wasting tons of corporate and public resources.

Anyways, what do people think of the revelation that Ceton was working on a wireless home audio system? That's a different direction for them. The other interesting tidbit hidden in the Ceton brief was a reference to a "HomeCaster" line of products. It didn't make any reference to video streaming, but perhaps the broader line would have included some of that functionality.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. With the impending death of WMC, and the failure of the Echo, I largely expected Ceton to abandon the consumer space and focus on the hospitality market. This lawsuit indicates that wasn't Ceton's plan at all, although I have no idea what they're going to do moving forward from this.

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#34

Post by kingwr » Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:51 pm

I doubt a jury will hear this. Gibson will file an answer to Ceton's counter-suit. Then both parties will make motions to dismiss the other's claims. This may be followed by interrogatories and/or depositions (where the real facts come out) and then the parties will sit down and negotiate a settlement.

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#35

Post by lithium630 » Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:34 pm

I say we call Judge Judy. (I would have said Wapner but I didn't want to date myself)

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#36

Post by STC » Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:32 am

Jerry Springer?
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#37

Post by erkotz » Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:05 am

reggie14 wrote:That's remarkably close to what Ceton's brief says. I'd kind of like to see Gibson's complaint, but it doesn't appear to be online for free anywhere, and I don't feel like creating a PACER account and paying a few bucks to get it.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us

Link over on the far left side (related links).

While I'd like to participate in the discussion within this thread, I just can't. Sorry.
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#38

Post by reggie14 » Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:01 pm

erkotz wrote:
reggie14 wrote:That's remarkably close to what Ceton's brief says. I'd kind of like to see Gibson's complaint, but it doesn't appear to be online for free anywhere, and I don't feel like creating a PACER account and paying a few bucks to get it.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us

Link over on the far left side (related links).

While I'd like to participate in the discussion within this thread, I just can't. Sorry.
Thanks!

There's tons of interesting information in that complaint. Tons! The pdf includes attachments after the complaint that have the agreement and statement of work. Those documents describe in detail the capability of the system Ceton was developing. It was far beyond just a wireless speaker system. It was intended to be a whole-home A/V distribution system. It even envisioned the use of the Echo as a playback client.

It's too bad we may never see this in action.

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#39

Post by makryger » Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:52 pm

Well, I do certainly like the concept they were working on- a new media center with cablecard and wireless streaming capability for a whole-home distribution. Too bad it degenerated into a lawsuit, though. It shows that Ceton isn't giving up on the Media Center concept yet (even if media center is slowly decaying).
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#40

Post by reggie14 » Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:10 pm

It sounds like the disagreement started over a decision by Gibson and/or Onkyo to scale back the project. I ordinarily would have expected them to scale it back to just include the wireless speaker system, although Ceton's countersuit indicated they scaled it back to just include a couple relatively expensive components. In particular, they indicated that these didn't include the wireless speakers originally envisioned. The Ceton countersuit also indicated the substituted products more closely resembled the products that were scheduled to be delivered later, which the Gibson complaint suggests were media hubs/streamers.

Still, I have a hard time seeing Onkyo particularly interested in video streaming products. Maybe Onkyo wanted to scale it back to just include audio streamers that would hook up to receivers. I could certainly see Ceton being upset by a switch like that.

Again, this is too bad. I suspect Ceton is too small to really do something on the scale of this project by themselves.

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