Faraday Legal News: Skramsoft Deregistered by ASIC

This page was published on the 25th of October, 2005.

Skramsoft Pty Ltd, is a Proprietry Limited Company incorporated in Australia. The Directors of this company are Jan Skarbek and Ashley Revell. Jan Skarbek describes himself as an highly professional and expert Macintosh/Quicktime programmer. Ashley Revell is a Hollywood motion picture sound track editor whose credits include The Chronicles of Riddick, Assault on Precinct 13, Aeon Flux, etc.

Skramsoft Pty Ltd specialises in Quicktime-based software for post-production in the motion picture industry and produced a retail software product called First Cut.

Jan Skarbek has represented that Ashley Revell was a good buddy of Jerry Bruckheimer. In particular it was claimed that the artwork for their First Cut product was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer's Art Department.

Jan Skarbek also represented that Skramsoft did digital video processing work (compression of video files) for overseas companies. It is not known if this was for Jerry Bruckheimer's Production Company. It is puzzling why important commercial digital footage would be sent from the USA, to be processed by a "back yarder" in Melboune, Victoria, Australia.

Skramsoft Pty Ltd company has now been deregistered by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission as of 18th of October, 2006.

Prior to this event Skramsoft Pty Ltd contracted Faraday R&D Pty Ltd to produce software that was to be incorporated into the First Cut software product. More info>> Over a period of time Jan Skarbek described Faraday R&D's work as "Hey this is fantastic", "This update is fantastic, Thank you", "this is unbelievably good work!", "highly professional source code" and so on.

The work originally contracted by Skramsoft was a table API with a number of deluxe features. This was completed in a time broadly in line with the initial estimate. A second table for listing and displaying Quicktime movies was produced by verbal agreement. This took two weeks. I warned Jan Skarbek that this would conflict with a deadline set by Ashley Revell but the warm encouragement I recieved from Jan indicated to me that I should continue. I notified Jan that this was complete and then by mutual agreement further work on this was passed to him. The integration work of these tables with the First Cut application was originally supposed to be Jan's responsibility. However Jan was suffering from some severe health problems and may also have found some parts of the PowerPlant Framework that I was using challenging. Consequently he shifted the responsibility of the integration work to me. It appears that Ashley Revell became dissatisfied and suspicious with the cost and the time over-run arising from the additional work requested of me by Jan.

Skramsoft formally terminated the contract apparently in response to Faraday formally invoking the mediation provisions of the contact. Just prior to this Faraday had obtained from Skramsoft a verbal undertaking that they would be completely satisfied with the completion of a fixed list of items that amounted to 3-4 days work. Skramsoft terminated the contact when 1-2 days work (representing 1-2% of the total time expended) were still outstanding.

Following non-payment for these software services Skramsoft Pty Ltd was subject to legal action by Faraday Pty Ltd. Skramsoft was ordered by the Court to pay the debt, but Skramsoft Pty Ltd has never complied with this order.

Following Faraday's initiation of legal action Jan Skarbek did send to Faraday an unsolicited email which described Faraday's work as "spew". This email represented itself as an email sent by Jan Skarbek to Ashely Revell which had been sent to Faraday by "accident". This email contains what would be called, in the movie industry, a continuity error. This error marks the email as bogus. I do not believe Ashely Revell has seen this email as he would have easily recognised such an error.

The Australian resident Director was subject to a Court Oral Examination. At that examination Skramsoft's Director testified under oath that Skramsoft Pty Ltd has no bank account, no assets and was not trading. The disposition of Skramsoft Pty Ltd's intellectual property assets, as declared in the contract of work between Skramsoft Pty Ltd and Faraday R&D and which referred to the First Cut software product as being entirely owned by Skramsoft Pty Ltd, was not explained.

The First Cut software product is now being distributed from a Skramsoft web site. This web site is operated by a company called Skramsoft LLC, incorporated in Delaware USA. This company is also operated by Jan Skarbek and Ashley Revell. Update 25th of November 2006: a few days just prior to this date the Skramsoft web site was replaced with another at the same URL. This new web site shows no relationship to the First Cut product. It seems to be a video-related portal site that is under construction. Update 5th of February 2007: the Skramsoft web site has now been taken over by their domain name register. More information about the evolution of the Skramsoft web site and Skramsoft business practices can be found here>>>

The conduct of Skramsoft in light of their claims to being "industry professionals" has proven to be quite interesting. After legal papers could not be delivered to their registered address in Sydney I travelled from Melbourne to Sydney to investigate. Skramsoft's registered office was a locked office with no occupants and no furniture. I eventually discovered that the office had previously been occupied by Ashley Revell's Accountant. I tracked down this Accountant and had a brief conversation him. It was explained to me that Ashley Revell was a person too important to deal with this matter.

A few days after returning to Melbourne the Police attended my home with a temporary intervention order. The correspondence of the two events may be a coincidence. The basis of this temporary intervention order was that part of the law related to family violence and in particular stalking. The opening statement of this order was that I was an ex-employee of Skramsoft who had been fired for stealing and who was stalking Jan Skarbek. Jan Skarbek is the Melbourne-resident Director of Skramsoft. This caused me considerable amusement as I have never been an employee of Skramsoft, had not been fired by Skramsoft (obviously), have not stolen anything and had not seen Jan Skarbek for 4.5 months. More info>>

A week later I attended court and at that time signed an agreement in which I agreed not to do things I had not done or would not do. If my finances had been in a better state I would let this go to judgement. However, even given the high likelihood of my entirely discrediting Jan Skarbek's manouvre, I would not have been able to avoid the legal costs because of the nature of the legal proceedings. The Judge did commented on my curious agreement not to ??stalk?? Ashley Revell. Ashley Revell lives in California, USA and I live in Melbourne, Australia.

A few days after my court attendance I recieved the aforementioned "spew" email. I am inclined to the view that the intent of this email was to make me loose my temper and to induce me to send an abusive email to Jan Skarbek in response. The likely consequence of such a response would have been a second visit to court, with myself suffering the accusation that I had breached the agreement I had just signed. If this analysis is correct it would appear that Jan Skarbek had been unable to achieve his true aims during the first court visit and was making a second attempt. I reported the incident to my Solicitor and did not respond with an email to Jan Skarbek.

It is not known to me if Ashley Revell was involved in this incident.

Skramsoft were then required to provide a legal defense document. Jan Skarbek was reluctant to do this and so he sent to my Solicitor a letter claiming that he could not provide the document, as he was physically and mentally ill and unable to work. This claim was supported by a medical certificate. Consequently a letter was sent to Ashley Revell requesting that Ashley Revell deal with the matter. Jan Skarbek then provided the required document. More info>>

The defense document, prepared by Jan Skarbek and either explicitly or implicitly approved by Ashley Revell, omitted many old claims that Jan had made previously to justify non-payment. A very large number of new claims were included. This follows the pattern set over the previous weeks where I would attempt to deal with a claim and then as soon as it looked like I would be able to deal with it successfully, the old claim would be dropped and a new entirely different and escalated claim would take its place. The old claims that were retained in the defense document were much ??improved??.

For example Jan Skarbek had previously introduced the claim, in his "stalking" temporary intervention order, that I had stolen his software and then distributed it on the internet. This claim was now modified. Now I was supposed to have stolen Skramsoft's software and then actively attempted to sell the software on the internet. An entirely new element in this story was that a good citizen had reported my nefarious activities to Skramsoft. This story does not explain why I admitted to the good citizen that the software was stolen or why I provided to the good citizen Skramsoft's contact details; which were private at the time. More info>>

Every single claim in Skramsoft's defense document was of similar quality.

Neither myself nor my legal representative have been able to establish communication with Ashley Revell about these matters despite numerous attempts. I would very much like to hear Ashley Revell's point of view.