A Tale Of Two ThinkDesign Suites
The unthinkable has come to pass. We now have two ThinkDesign Suites. A reader alerted me to this press release by Think3, the one managed by the Italian trustee. The press release announces the release of the “official” beta of ThinkDesign Suite version 2011.1. Customers can download the software from www.think3.eu by logging into Customer Care.
On its part, Versata has already gone ahead and released version 2011.4 of what it claims to be the “official” ThinkDesign Suite.
I know that Versata has a bunch of programmers scattered all around the world. The question is how did Dr. Frerri, the Italian court appointed trustee of Think3 Italy, manage to assemble a team to get ThinkDesign Suite 2011.1 out to customers.
In a recent communication to Think3 customers Dr. Ferri wrote:
Versata is circulating false information about the Italian Legal Procedure. I want to point out that the Italian Procedure regards Think3 Inc. as a single company that is under the Italian bankruptcy procedure and not as a third entity or a subsidiary company of Think3 as is being alleged by Versata. All goods (including IP), employees and goodwill are located in Italy and therefore the Court of Bologna is protecting the assets of the bankruptced company. The US Court has no jurisditcion against the Italian Bankruptcy Procedure. Therefore the opening of the Chapter 11 process does not give any rights to Versata. Versata is sending to Think3 clients messages illegally using the think3 trademark and advertising think3 products in order to distract customers. The use of http://www.think3.versata.com/ domain name is also illegal. Therefore, Think3 is the only owner of the intellectual property rights of the software (ThinkDesign, Thinkteam, TD PLM etc…) and it is not permitted in any way the use of this software without the required authorization of dott. Andrea Ferri through legal sales by Authorised Think3 VARs. All contracts related to license agreement entered into and between Versata and third parties has to be considered null and void and all payments concerning the use of think3 products have to be effected to the Italian Bankruptcy Procedure. Very soon we will be sending you more information about the future plans for the company.
I guess the future plan of Dr. Ferri is to keep developing the Think3 software. As it turns out, that also seems to be the future plan of Versata. So now we have two code streams of the Think3 being separately developed by two development teams and both are calling it ThinkDesign Suite.