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Subject: Re: What happened to TASC?

Author: Steven Schwartz

Date: 14:13:27 10/27/01

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On October 27, 2001 at 13:16:14, O. Veli wrote:

>They had very nice products such as R30, TascBase, Chessica and Tasc CD a few
>years back. But they were suddenly out of business. I heard about a court ruling
>penalizing them for 500,000 USD. If that is the case what was the court about?
>Thanks.


I think TASC is still around; although, we have not dealt with
them since the debacle of the TASC Smartboard. It was a great
machine, but according to a New York federal court, TASC took
the patented concept of piece regognition developed by a New
Jersey company, Brehn Corporation, and used it without permission
and despite signing non-disclosure agreements.

We got dragged into the suit because we were, by far, the largest
seller of the machines in the U.S., and despite the fact that we had
no idea that the product infringed on any patent, we were in
court because Brehn felt that by dragging in a U.S. company,
they would force the Amsterdam company (TASC) to come to the
negotiating table.

Well, it didn't quite happen that way. TASC basically defaulted
the court case by not showing up, and we agreed to pay about $3,000
to Brehn just to get out of the case. They didn't want us anyway.

The judge ordered TASC to pay $581,000. I have no idea what happened
after that, but the TASC Smartboard disappeared shortly thereafter.
Steve



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