The CrunchPad drama continued Monday, with the chief of Fusion Garage calling Michael Arrington's claim on the device "ludicrous" and introducing its own 12.1-inch tablet, which has been re-branded as the JooJoo.

The CrunchPad drama continued Monday, with the chief of Fusion Garage calling Michael Arrington's claim on the device "ludicrous" and introducing its own 12.1-inch tablet, which has been re-branded as the JooJoo.

Fusion Garage will start taking pre-orders for the $499 device on Friday at thejoojoo.com. Delivery is expected within 8 to 10 weeks, Chandra Rathakrishnan, Fusion Garage chief executive, said during a Monday webcast. The company is in talks with retail partners, but no announcements have been made, he said.

The JooJoo comes in black and has a capacitive touch screen, enough graphic power to deliver full high-definition video, offline capabilities, and a 4GB solid-state drive, though "most of the storage is done in the cloud," Rathakrishnan said. He promised 5 hours of battery life.

In a demo during the webcast, the device powered on in about 10 seconds, and showed icons for web-based services like Twitter, Hulu, CNN, and Gmail, though the JooJoo will not come pre-loaded with any apps, Rathakrishnan said. Scroll through them with your finger as you would on the iPhone.

In terms of the ownership drama, Rathakrishnan said that TechCrunch editor Arrington has created an "incomplete and distorted story."

The CrunchPad/JooJoo dates back to July 2008, when Arrington penned a blog post on TechCrunch asking for someone to help him build a "dead simple Web tablet for $200."

Fast forward to a Nov. 30 blog post, in which that the CrunchPad was just days from launch when Rathakrishnan e-mailed him out of the blue to say that Arrington was no longer part of the project and that Fusion Garage would market the device itself under its own name.

Rathakrishnan took issue with Arrington's account and said he "is not the person I've been portrayed as in the blogosphere."

Rathakrishnan said he read Arrington's original 2008 post and was intrigued at the prospect. He approached Arrington at the editor's annual TechCrunch 50 conference, and met with him later to explain what Fusion Garage was building.

Arrington was "more than a little interested" and promised that he would be able to deliver hardware partners and investors, Rathakrishnan said Monday. His "much larger objective," however, was to purchase Fusion Garage and establish a controlling interest in the company, according to Rathakrishnan.

Simply put, however, Arrington was unable to deliver, Rathakrishnan said. As a result, Fusion Garage completed the development of the OS, hired the necessary expertise to complete the hardware side of the equation, solved remaining technology issues, and worked on arrangements with OEMs.

Fusion Garage secured funding from its shareholders, which now totals $3 million, he said.

Rathakrishnan acknowledged that "many conversations" did take place with Arrington and that which would have been a vehicle for distribution of the device, but "ultimately nothing came out" of that. No contracts of any kind were ever signed, he said.

"TechCrunch didn't contribute a single line of code," Rathakrishnan said. "It was Fusion Garage that brought the device from the dead."

Fusion Garage offered Arrington "the possibility of working with us" without the controlling interest, but Arrington turned that down, Rathakrishnan said.

In the end, TechCrunch and Fusion Garage had little more than a loose verbal agreement, but when Arrington did not deliver, Fusion Garage proceeded without him.

"Michael's attempts to claim credit ring hollow," Rathakrishnan said. "The suggestions that Michael, TechCrunch, or CrunchPad owns any IP associated [with the JooJoo] is simply ludicrous. Fusion Garage alone owns all IP and proprietary rights associated with the product."

Rathakrishnan is not concerned by the possibility of a lawsuit. "We are confident in our decision. We own the IP and we will defend it."

He is also not worried about marketing the device without Arrington's help. "TechCrunch's marketing capability is resigned to a blog," he said. "With the partners we have aligned, we have a broader spectrum of marketing capabilities."

When asked how the JooJoo compares to , Rathakrishnan said that both projects have a "similar vision," but Fusion Garage does not view netbooks as the best form factor for Internet access on-the-go.

"We are real, we are out there in the market today," he said, while Google Chrome OS is not expected to debut until the end of 2010.

Arrington has not yet issued his rebuttal, though in a Friday blog post, he said "there is just no way to argue that TechCrunch is not the joint owner of all intellectual property of the CrunchPad, and outright owner of the CrunchPad trademark."

UPDATE: "There aren't any more CrunchPad posts coming from us. It's all in the lawyers hands now," Arrington wrote in a Monday afternoon Twitter post.