Topic: Mad Catz and Fire Respond to Pelican Lawsuit

[NewsBot]

Pelican claims that Mad Catz and Fire International have competed unfairly. They, of course, disagree.  

MAD CATZ AND FIRE INTERNATIONAL RESPOND TO FRIVOLOUS ELECTRO SOURCE/PELICAN ACCESSORIES LAWSUIT            

SAN DIEGO, TORONTO & DONCASTER, England--Feb. 14, 2003--Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. (AMEX:MCZ) (TSE:MCZ), the world's leading third-party video game accessory manufacturer, and Fire International Ltd., a leading intellectual property and technology development firm, today responded to a lawsuit filed on February 10, 2003 against both parties by Electro Source, LLC, which does business as Pelican Accessories. The suit, filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that Mad Catz and U.K.-based, Fire International, Ltd. competed unfairly with Pelican in the development and marketing of certain video game products.

    Mad Catz and Fire are unaware of any basis for, or facts to support, the claims made by Pelican, and believe the claims are completely and entirely baseless and without merit. In particular all intellectual property being used by Mad Catz in its GameShark products was either developed independently or acquired by Mad Catz when it purchased the GameShark brand and the www.gameshark.com Web site URL from InterAct in January 2003.

    Mad Catz and Fire will vigorously defend themselves against the suit and will seek to recover all costs and expenses imposed on them by Pelican resulting from the lawsuit. Additionally, both Mad Catz and Fire are considering filing countersuits against Pelican and its principals.

    Morris Perlis, Mad Catz' CEO, and Jason Cooper, Group Managing Director of Fire, jointly issued the following statement, "We are outraged at the claims of Pelican, which are based on total inaccuracies. This ludicrous lawsuit is baseless and spurious. It is an offensive attempt to improperly use the courts to achieve an end that Pelican could not achieve commercially. GameShark was acquired by Mad Catz in an auction that was fairly and legally conducted. It is an affront to suggest otherwise. We will be strongly and forcefully defending this lawsuit and have no doubts of our complete success. We look forward to presenting the true facts. In particular, any attempt to intimidate our customers will not be tolerated."

    GameShark is the industry leader in video game enhancement software, which enables players to take full advantage of the secret codes, short cuts, hints and cheats incorporated by video game publishers into their game offerings. The highly popular GameShark web site is one of the highest traffic gaming sites on the Internet. Mad Catz intends to continue aggressively marketing its new GameShark brand and looks forward to continued success as the world's leading third party video game accessory manufacturer.  

[Eyusef]

First of all, MAD CATZ is NOT the industry leader in 3rd party peripherals.  They make cheap garbage that more often than not DON'T WORK.  We don't even by MAD CATZ products from our customers due to the 90% return rate from our customers that have bought these items from us in the past.

Secondly, GameShark is nothing more than the NA name of Datel/Recoton's Action Replay.  These guys may get sued by more than just Pelican if it's found that they didn't actually design their own enhancement device, but merely copied Datel's copyrighted technology/programming.

ARGH!