December 13th, 1999

9:15 AM] Mactell Granted Temporary Injunction Against Rantic Labs by Staff In a very interesting twist to the seemingly ongoing Mactell/Rantic saga, Mactell has been granted a temporary injunction against Rantic Labs preventing them from manufacturing or selling FireWire peripherals. The Mac Observer has gained access to publicly available documents filed in Travis County, Texas referring to the court case. Originally, Rantic Labs was going to be manufacturing the FirePower product line licensed from Mactell. Mactell was among the first companies to announce a full FireWire product line before they shut their doors earlier this year. At some point, the agreement broke down and Rantic Labs announced a new product line called FirePath. The temporary injunction prohibits Rantic Labs from 1. manufacturing, having manufactured, using, selling, modifying the products, creating derivative works, or otherwise exploiting the following firewire [sic] products for use with any computer that utilizes firewire technology as its interface for peripherals with limitation: a. firewire [sic] mass storage b. firewire [sic] CD-R and CD-RW c. firewire [sic] DAT d. Firewire [sic] PCI host adapters e. Firewire [sic] hubs and repeaters; etc. When asked for comment, Roy Stocker, president of Mactell, said only "The injunction speaks for itself." Rantic Labs was not available for comment. The two parties are due in court today. The Mac Observer Spin: This too bad. Long time readers will know that we have been fans of Mactell, and by extension, Rantic Labs, for some time. We have been unable to ascertain the nature of the breakdown in the agreements between the two companies, but we hope to see the FirePower line hit the market in some fashion. It is important for Apple to have as many FireWire devices on the market as possible. It would be great to see these two companies somehow come together again, though looking at the court proceedings, that seems less and less likely. Mactell - Rantic Labs