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04.Aug.2026
Out-of-court settlement between Amiga and Hyperion is publicly available
This morning, Amiga Corporation and Hyperion announced that they had signed<br>an out-of-court settlement. The reason for this announcement was apparently<br>that the signed agreement was made public today as part of a motion to<br>dismiss the lawsuit in the United States.
We reviewed the contract<br>(PDF), which replaces Hyperion’s<br>old agreement with Amiga Inc. from 2009, and attempted to briefly<br>summarize the key points. It should be noted that we have limited ourselves<br>to the main topics: the actual contract goes into considerably more detail<br>and contains various additional provisions, most of them concerning Hyperion.
Trademarks
The issue of trademarks - the original cause of the legal<br>dispute - has been resolved: Hyperion acknowledges Amiga's ownership of<br>all relevant Amiga trademarks. The more than 20 registrations of "Kickstart",<br>"Workbench", "AmigaOS", "BoingBall", and other trademarks that Hyperion has<br>applied for or already obtained worldwide will be transferred to the Amiga<br>Corporation.
AmigaOS 4
AmigaOS 4 remains the property of Hyperion and may continue to be<br>distributed as usual without any license fees being due. To facilitate this,<br>the company receives a license to use the AmigaOS 3.1 source code, as well as<br>an exclusive license for the "AmigaOne" trademark and non-exclusive licenses<br>for the "AmigaOS" and BoingBall trademarks. The terms "Workbench" and<br>"Kickstart" may also be used to refer to the aforementioned components of the<br>operating system. In addition, AmigaOS 3.1 may be distributed as part of<br>AmigaOS 4 to ensure compatibility with older software.
What's new is that the license explicitly permits support for any<br>processors - except m68k, see below: AmigaOS 4 is no longer tied<br>to the PowerPC. The rights guaranteed by Hyperion here are transferable only<br>with Amiga’s prior written consent - for example, in the event of the<br>company’s dissolution or a merger with another party.
AmigaOS 3
For the first time, Hyperion is also being granted an explicit license to<br>distribute AmigaOS 3.2 as well as the yet-to-be-released AmigaOS 3.3 -<br>however, this license expires on December 31, 2027, after which Hyperion must<br>withdraw from the 68k market.
Sales of these OS versions are permitted only as updates for systems that<br>already have AmigaOS installed - the license therefore cannot be used for retro<br>consoles or the digital distribution of fully playable Amiga classics.<br>Apart from that, the terms and conditions for the use of Amiga's trademarks<br>and the 3.1 source code are similar to those for AmigaOS 4.
The Amiga Corporation earns revenue from sales of 3.2 and 3.3: A royalty is<br>to be paid for each digital or physical copy sold. However, the exact amount of<br>the royalties is redacted in the document we have on hand.
Following its withdrawal from the 68k market, Hyperion must hand over the<br>source code for its OS3 versions to Amiga. However, code backported from<br>AmigaOS 4 is expressly excluded from this requirement. It is not entirely<br>clear to us which versions of OS3 are affected by this:
In Section 1.n, the "Software" owned by the Amiga Corporation is defined as<br>"AmigaOS 3.1 [as well as] all enhancements, modifications, fixes, and updates<br>thereof, including but not limited to AmigaOS 3.1.3 and 3.1.4 and all fixes<br>and updates thereof". This would presumably include versions 3.2 and 3.3,<br>which - excluding the code backported from OS4 - would then have to<br>be transferred to Amiga by the end of 2027. However, Section 7.a.i states<br>that Hyperion is under no obligation to deliver to Amiga the source code<br>for either AmigaOS 3.2 or AmigaOS 3.3.
We have asked Amiga Corporation's Mike Battilana for clarifaction regarding<br>this matter and will update the summary accordingly if necessary.
To ensure that Amiga can continue development of AmigaOS 3 after Hyperion's<br>withdrawal, Hyperion must, upon its withdrawal, release all developers<br>involved in the project from any obligations to the Belgian company.<br>Furthermore, effective immediately, no new agreements may be entered into<br>with external developers under which the respective developer retains rights<br>to the work they are delivering.<br>(cg)
[News message: 04. Aug. 2026, 19:25] [Comments: 0]
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