back to article McAfee settles McAfee lawsuit over McAfee name

Virus-fighting tech renegade John McAfee has settled his lawsuit in the US with Intel over his own name. A judge in Manhattan dismissed both the barmy baron's 2016 lawsuit and Intel's countersuit on Wednesday after they announced they had received agreement over how and when McAfee was allowed to use his own name. The full …

  1. Herby

    Moral of the story...

    Don't name a company after yourself and sell it off. Require that as a condition of having the name, they must keep you on salary at $$$$ every year.

    To said companies: Wait until the founders die before doing anything rash, it is a bit easier.

    Think what it would be if that company were called "Bill Gates' Software", maybe shortened to "BS".

    1. eldakka

      Re: Moral of the story...

      Don't name a company after yourself and sell it off. Require that as a condition of having the name, they must keep you on salary at $$$$ every year.

      There's a right way and a wrong way to name a company after yourself.

      • WRONG* - sell your name to the company for a 1 time fee
      • RIGHT - lease your name to the company, with a "greater of x value or 0.01% of revenue", and with clauses for additional bonuses when the company is sold off.

      (*) Unless it is a humongously large price - like $500mill**.

      (**) Tho I guess in 1991, $9mill was a humongously large price for a security firm like McAfee.

    2. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Moral of the story...

      If I was Dr Solomon I'd be contemplating a sueball to swell the retirement coffers.

      1. drsolly

        Re: Moral of the story...

        I am Dr Solomon

    3. Valerion

      Re: Moral of the story...

      Bill Gates' Software

      Reminds me of a thing from many years back when some kid who went by the name of Mike Rowe set up a software company - Mike Rowe Soft.

      He got cease-and-desisted pretty quickly IIRC.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Intel said it was pleased the case was over"

    You betcha - nobody wants to remind their shareholders that they dropped several billion on a brief tenure of the steaming manure of McAfee-the-disk-churner

    1. wsm

      Re: "Intel said it was pleased the case was over"

      Over? With someone like McAfee it will probably never be over. One more wild night with those "nurses" from his video and he will be back for more fees because of another technicality.

      Hopefully, his heirs won't be as loopy as he is. Then it will really be all over for John McAfee.

  3. FozzyBear
    Paris Hilton

    I don't know what they did but it was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute to do my taxes while I f**ked my accountant."

    And that folks is the when you should put the crack pipe down and let the fumes dissipate for a while before making any other decisions.OR

    Continue full throttle until either the body or the money runs out.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      So is he planning a run for president ?

  4. Trilkhai

    Its rep was trash long before 2013...

    <quote>McAfee himself was partly responsible for damaging his own name-brand, calling the 2013 version of the security suite "the worst software on the planet" in a bizarre NSFW video featuring himself, some strippers, some suspicious nose powder, a handgun, and a PC.</quote>

    From what I recall, McAfee was decent software back before Intel purchased it, and their changes made it notorious for being awful & extremely hard to get rid of. John McAfee made the video because he was fed up with people berating him over software he hadn't touched in almost 20 years and insisting he tell them how to remove it.

    Personally, I got a kick out of the video — both because I find lunatic antics amusing, and because I remembered having more than one "dammit, am I going to have to clean-install Windows to get rid of this POS?!" moment when trying to purge McAfee (or Norton) from people's systems.

    1. bex

      Optional

      From what I remember McAfee was always a bag of spanners, none the right size and all with rounded ends.

      1. Korev Silver badge

        Re: Optional

        I used to love the way it made your computer unusable for a few minutes when starting a Java programme on a machine with a single core.

      2. JakeMS
        Happy

        Re: Its rep was trash long before 2013...

        I remember when McAfee was pre-installed as a trial on brand new PCs and people new to computers would assume that it was a good scanner and pay for a license to be safe.

        Shortly after their computers would be running slow, with lots of problems.

        Then to remove viruses and to fix the problems they would have to take it to a computer geek who would then have to remove said viruses and usually end up removing McAfee too!

        Oh, those were the days! We used to have all sorts of "fun" applications pre-installed as trials.

        These days we just get new laptops that come pre-installed with uBuntu no trialware (read: junkware) installed. No more fun spending hours removing tons of trial applications from a brand new PC.

        Kinda boring in a way. Although, you still end up re-installing the OS to place your own preferred distro instead if your a "power user".

      3. a_a
        Joke

        Re: Optional

        From what I remember McAfee was always a bag of spanners, none the right size and all with rounded ends.

        and his software?

    2. DropBear

      Re: Its rep was trash long before 2013...

      Actually I still recall the days when McAfee the virus scanner was quite a respectable name - yes the OS was DOS 6.22, but still. I have to give it to him - those times did exist. I can't fault the guy for what his software did during the halcyon days of the wavy flag if he was no longer in charge...

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Its rep was trash long before 2013...

        "I still recall the days when McAfee the virus scanner was quite a respectable name"

        It was trash long before 6.22 - I used to call it Make-A-FEE - separate scanner, cleaner and innoculation packages for $20 each per year

        F-prot was $1, all-in-one AND updated for new malware more frequently than McAfee (this was long before Notron branched into AV stuff)

  5. hellwig

    McAfee name still has value?

    Who sees "McAfee" and thinks quality?

    If it's the software, you know it's not going to do anything other than hog system resources. If it's the man, you know it's a homicidal* maniac.

    *no actual conviction handed down

  6. Androgynous Cow Herd

    more power to him

    this reminds me of when the record label sued Tom Fogerty for sounding like Tom Fogerty.

    I think the McAfee name has tremendous marketing potential. You could sell energy drinks, stripper poles, Bolivian marching powder, automatic weapons and Belizean time shares with it easily...

  7. James O'Shea

    personally

    I like his backup policies, as shown in that video. For some reason SWMBO doesn't...

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