Fusion Garage Moves To Dismiss Lawsuit, Promises JooJoo Shipments By End Of February

Fusion Garage has been pretty quiet lately, especially in the run-up to the announcement of the iPad, which is seen by many as serious competition for the JooJoo. This week begins with two bits of JooJoo news. The first is that Fusion Garage is moving to dismiss the lawsuit filed by TechCrunch outright, saying that their claims are “legally barred, facially flawed, and fatally imprecise.” Though the lawsuit and attending machinations aren’t all that interesting, it has been cause for concern among those who pre-ordered the tablets. There were even murmurings that perhaps the JooJoo wouldn’t ship at all due to the legal wranglings. Not so, says Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan. In an interview with VentureBeat, Rathakrishnan promised that consumers would get their JooJoos by the end of February (within their stated timeframe) and that “pre-orders have exceeded our expectations.” The interview is short, but does get into a bit of JooJoo vs. iPad talk. Rathakrishnan touts the JooJoo’s larger screen and Flash capability and plays down the lack of apps — “Our app store will be the entire Internet.” — and 3G. 3G isn’t off the table, but right now isn’t included in the first generation. We hope to get our hands on the JooJoo in the next few weeks and put the device though it’s paces.