“A set-up.” Jasper shrugged and passed the invitation to Chad.
Chad took a look and reacted completely differently from Jasper by immediately frowning at its content.
“Melody Electronics wants to invite us for a joint product launch? And they even invited a few television and newspaper representatives?”
At that, Chad instantly reacted. “This is the MP3 player manufacturer that’s been advertising their products all this while?”
“Exactly. And they have a domestic license to manufacture the MP3 player,” Jasper spoke calmly.
Chad frowned and spoke, “So they’re just intending to make a fool out of us in front of the media, then.”
“That’s why I called it a set-up. I’m afraid this isn’t as simple as making a fool of us. They’re going to use the power of the press to completely kill our product the moment it launches.”
Jasper had a calm expression on his face. He could already imagine how excited and proud Conrad must have looked when he made this decision.
Even though Conrad’s move was rather surprising and sudden, Jasper was not angry at him at all.
After all, they were rivals, and there was no law claiming that only Jasper could plot against Conrad and not the other way around.
The two of them were merely trying to spot weak points while they attacked and countered each other, in hopes to get rid of the other once and for all.
About the incident in Coreana regarding the patent, Jasper had found a way to counter Conrad. However, it was not a lie that Conrad’s move had almost destroyed Jasper’s chances of making profits through the MP3 player.
Conrad was still the one attacking now, and Jasper had to react.
This time, Jasper decided that he would counterattack.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t attend, Mr. Laine,” Chad suggested with furrowed brows.
Jasper smiled. “Don’t worry, I have a plan. Come with me when I attend. The roles in this set-up haven’t been decided yet.”
Seeing how Jasper had already made up his mind, Chad nodded and decided to go along with it.
With Chad’s agreement, Jasper immediately made two calls.
Chad’s eyes shone brighter as Jasper made the few calls.
The first call was to Hudson Moore.
The second and third calls were to Ryder from Harbor City’s Advent Entertainment and Ted from Swallow Capital’s Easy Media.
He had done two things with those calls.
The first thing was to have the two companies under Advent Entertainment grant JW Electronics the right to use their artists’ songs.
The second was to have the two media companies sign a strategic cooperation agreement with Terizone. Terizone would then create a downloading site for MP3 players, where available songs would include artists from both media companies, as quickly as possible. Those artists happen to make up about 70% of the famous singers in Harbor City and the Mainland.
“You want to play with copyright and patent rights, Conrad? Fine, then we’ll block your content. So what if you have an MP3 player? You won’t be able to download any music and even if you are, it’d be the pirated version while our MP3 players will provide tracks from the source. I’d like to see how you’re going to win this.”
Jasper smiled at Chad who was excited and impatient.
