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Subject: Re: The Fidelity vs. ICD/Your Move Lawsuit... The Epic

Author: Bertil Eklund

Date: 11:46:22 10/19/00

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On October 19, 2000 at 11:19:39, Steven Schwartz wrote:

>On October 19, 2000 at 05:46:19, Francesco Di Tolla wrote:
>
>>On October 18, 2000 at 13:45:26, Steven Schwartz wrote:
>>
>>>We received notification of the lawsuit in 1985 and the trial
>>>took place in 1991.
>>
>>May I ask a thing that is not clear to me: what was the issue?
>>regards
>>Franz
>
>
>Back in 1984 Fidelity announced that they were going to be
>manufacturing an "over 2000 rated machine" that would sell for
>"under $100". It was called the Excellence.
>
>We, as usual, were very skeptical. As holiday season, 1985
>was approaching, we asked several dozen times for samples of
>the machines so that we could test the actual strength. Each
>request was met with some excuse why we could not have samples.
>If memory serves me correctly, the day before the Chess Life
>ad deadline, we received two Excellences.
>
>While Fidelity was telling us that they had not a single machine
>to supply to us, they had entered several of them in a tournament
>in Florida. Luckily, we had several customers who were attending
>the tournament, and they were able to test the MHz speed of
>the machines and found that they were running at 8 MHz when the
>production model was set to run at 3 MHz. We knew this because
>we ran a problem and asked the customer to run the identical
>problem on one of the units at the tournament.
>
>Naturally, Fidelity was not planning on announcing the faster
>speed for these specially prepared tournament machines, but they
>were ready and willing to announce the actual results of the tournament.
>
>We waited until the last second (literally) to submit an ad to
>Chess Life (the U.S. Chess Federation magazine) because we wanted
>to get the results of as many games as possible so we could
>print as accurate an estimate as possible.
>
>The ad that we decided to print promoted a Saitek TurboStar as
>playing "over 2000" for "under $200" on half the page, and based
>upon the results that were phoned into us that afternoon, we used
>the other half of the page to promote the Excellence as "over 1700"
>and "under $100". The "over 1700" rating was based upon the
>tournament rating at that point of about 1850. Since the
>production models were only going to run 38% as fast, we
>calculated that 1700 was a fair estimate. The consumer was
>NEVER supposed to find out that the models in the tournament
>were not identical to the ones that would be sold.
>
>Fidelity was not pleased. After all, they spent almost a year
>hyping the Excellence as playing "over 2000" and here, their
>best dealer, was not singing the party line.
>
>So, what does Sid do? He sues us for $1.5 million dollars for
>the business he claimed that he lost as a result of our Chess
>Life ad. It was ludicrous, but we had to defend ourselves,
>and we did.
>
>Two VERY odd things happened.
>     1) Sid found out about the ad BEFORE it actually appeared
>in Chess Life (which meant that someone at the USCF had to have
>leaked the information about the ad to him).
>     2) We received notification of the suit less than one month
>after the ad was published. This meant that Fidelity was claiming
>that the 1.5 million dollar loss occurred in a period of perhaps
>3 weeks.
>
>Since the plan, in my opinion, was to do business with the USCF at
>the exclusion of ICD/Your Move, the suit was the proper smoke
>screen to allow Fidelity to refuse to sell product to us which
>is what happened. Sid could also use the suit to show all his
>other dealers two things:
>     1) That ICD/Your Move was "wrong". After all, if you bother
>to sue someone, you MUST be right.
>     2) That other dealers better sing the party line or else they
>could meet the same fate.
>
>It is my understanding that the Federation sold plenty of
>Excellences that season, because THEY advertised the machine as
>"Over 2000" in their ads in the magazine without having any
>information but what Fidelity told them.
>
>In reality, if EVERY single member of the USCF had planned to
>buy an Excellence and if our ad prevented EVERY single person
>who read the ad from buying the machine, then their damages
>would STILL have been less than 1.5 million. Despite the fact
>that Fidelity saw our ad as so damaging, there had never, ever
>been a chess computer up until that point that had over a 1700
>rating but cost under $100, and we had over 100 pre-orders which
>we could not fill because Fidelity would not sell to us.
>
>What WAS the Excellence rated? I do not really know, but looking
>back on it now, probably 1800 or so. I think we were doing our
>customers a service, but, as you can see, that is not always
>rewarded.
>
>Steve (ICD/Your Move Chess & Games)
Hi!

It was rated about 1720 (1989) since then I believe the list is lowered a few
times.

It was two persons that I remember especially well from the world-championships
in Glasgow, Scotland in 1984, Sidney Samole and Ossi Weiner. Why, because they
were involved in disputes with other people almost daily. Anyway Fidelity won
together with Princhess and Richard Lang.

Bertil



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