The Fusion Garage webcast has come and gone and there’s not much new to report. The company is indeed moving forward with the device formerly known as the CrunchPad, now dubbed JooJoo. It’s going to cost $499 instead of the approximate $300 for the original CrunchPad and will come in just one color.

I think I’m still siding with Arrington on this one. Chandra Rathakrishnan made a serious attempt to vilify Arrington during his webcast, and he mentioned several times that Arrington had contributed nothing, but then why has so much changed? Was the color scheme Arrington’s idea? And what of the price? Why is suddenly more than $100 more expensive than rumored, even at the highest CrunchPad prices?

Rathakrishnan’s one decent point came when he was asked if he thought the device could be a success without Arrington’s marketing. He reminded us that all we had from Arrington was blog posts. It’s true, but if that’s really all that Arrington and TechCrunch had contributed I doubt there would be serious legal action underway.

Unfortunately, the one truth I can see from this is that we won’t be seeing the device under either name. I know JooJoo is supposedly going to launch this week, but I’d be shocked if Arrington let that happen. If this goes to court and Arrington wins, you can bet he’s not going back into business with these guys. If he loses, it’ll likely be after a lengthy process, and JooJoo will be too little, too late. At $500 it’s already way too expensive for what it does.

Source: Gizmodo

Arrington is pissed about this CrunchPad situation. So far, it seems pretty justified, but it’s a little strange to see so much information around the nuclear fallout for this thing made public. In a post titled “CrunchPad Litigation Imminent,” Arrington has laid out his next few steps in the legal process.

Apparently Fusion Garage claims Arrington knew the split was coming and that he and his team at TechCrunch contributed nothing to the device. I’m not sure how that could be, considering the name it bears. I’ll leave the rest of the details for Arrington to share, but suffice it to say he’s none too happy about tomorrow’s Fusion Garage press conference. His post contains emails from Chandra Rathakrishnan, Fusion Garage’s CEO, as well as the letters Arrington’s lawyers sent to the manufacturers regarding the situation. It’s all one big, ugly, entertaining mess.

Source: TechCrunch