i thought i'd give people a summary of the situation so far.

1) i looked up the advice on trademark invalidation: it says that you have to make the attempt (continously) to enter into negotiations. 2) the directors of qimod ltd are making absolutely no effort *whatsoever* to my efforts at negotiation. 3) the reason why not seem to be one of revenge, pure and simple. 4) due to the revenge-seeking the settlement offers received have matched the director's desires to marginalise (effectively terminate) the goals of this project. 5) the reasons for the revenge-seeking are down, sadly, to miscommunications. this is partly a knock-on effect of my working sustained and continuous 14 hour days for months at a time: pure exhaustion meant that i had to take a break. this was when the mis-communications accumulated. 6) one of the miscommunications is in the handling of the kde project. 7) the directors (myself included) made a joint - as it turned out risky - decision to let aaron handle the first critical product release, instead of going with a MEBv2. 8) as the delays turned to months, resulting in embarrassment for qimod with its suppliers, the directors made a joint decision to cancel the supply of product to makeplaylive.com and ordered them to remove all mention of qimod and eoma68 from all web sites. 9) aaron claims never to have received that message. 10) the key director (majority shareholder) of qimod FORGOT that he had ever sent that message! 11) aaron and the majority shareholder then had a conversation in which they decided that i was the sole exclusive source of all problems. 12) the directors of qimod then met and these mis-apprehensions were used as the basis of a decision to no longer trust me.

so it is a rather unfortunate story involving, pure and simple, mis-communication. i am taking a multi-pronged approach to deal with this:

1) as the copyright holder of something like 95% of the material involved, including the entire text of the EOMA68 standard (with a few minor contributors), and pretty much all of the PCB designs, i am in a strong position to be able to continue the project

2) as the copyright holder of the EOMA68 standard's text, and as the only person who has been promoting the EOMA standards publicly, and *especially* as there has quite literally been no effort on the part of the qimod directors to engage in negotiations, i am in a strong position to have the qimod registered trademark invalidated. trademark tribunals take a very dim view of parties that do not engage in negotiations.

3) i am continuing to attempt to communicate with the directors of qimod, to get to the bottom of the mis-communications, and to enter into reasonable and rational negotiations as best i can. one of the (minor) directors is a lawyer who specialises in settlements: he has actually *already* given up hope as he is overwhelmed by the vehemence and venom behind the majority shareholder's words - especially i think he cannot quite believe that a friend of such long-standing should seek revenge in such a way.

4) i am also seeking advice on how a more "powerful" individual may overwhelm someone by not *explicitly* seeking their consent to become a Director of a Ltd Company... and then, based on *verbal assumption*, sign that individual up for the legally-binding responsibility as a Director of a Limited Company.... using *online web sites only*.

in the background of all of this i am continuing to talk to SoC companies, develop future PCBs, find suppliers to make prototypes and talk with a reputable crowd-funding company to get the first CPU Card and first base-board out the door. the EOMA68-A20 CPU Card is paid-for and on its way (don't ask me to give timescales! :) and the other PCBs (micro-desktop, EOMA68-A33, EOMA68-jz4775) i am seeking companies to get them made. i am expecting to hear from a company on monday about the IC1t CPU Card and the micro-desktop PCB samples.

so, lots going on.

l.