According to my understanding Panik was never the CEO or President of DFMI but was on the board off and on during the 8 years DFMI was around. He had a security agreement and lien on the company assets for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he loaned the company.
Yes I believe it required the action of a majority of the shares outstanding to secure the assets like that. After taking over the code license he was required to notify the Iterated successor but their approval was not required just their notification. Copies of that notification are in the public filings I have seen on the Dimension web site. There may have been some discussion between them at that point but I have no idea what it was. It doesnt sound like there was a problem.
However after knowingly buying the stolen copy of the codec from Simpson and Haskins TMM also knowingly failed to notify the Iterated successor. They clearly knew what would happen then.
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