Surprise, surprise. The legal embroilment-cum-tablet computer known as the JooJoo is officially no more. Fusion Garage’s founder Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan confirmed today that the company is discontinuing its first product.

As you may recall, the JooJoo was officially conceived by tech journalist Michael Arrington and called the CrunchPad. Fusion Garage was his manufacturing partner, but things went sour shortly before the tablet was supposed to launch. At which time, Fusion kicked Arrington to the curb, Arrington sued and the JooJoo made a pretty much silent debut in the market.

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Filed under the “consumers couldn’t really care less” category, the infamous JooJoo tablet is set for launch this month. According to a phone conversation with VentureBeat’s Paul Boutin, Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan confirmed that the JooJoo will ship by the end of this month.

Dedicated techofiles will recall that the JooJoo was originally the CrunchPad, envisioned by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and manufactured by Singapore company Fusion Garage. Later, turmoil between the two parties caused their agreement to fall apart and a move by Fusion Garage to market and sell the device (renamed JooJoo) independently. Of course, a lawsuit is in the works and Fusion Garage recently filed a motion to dismiss TechCrunch’s lawsuit.

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In a move that shouldn’t be very surprising to anyone, Michael Arrington announced that his CrunchPad team has filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage, the hardware manufacturer involved in building the device.

In case you were in an extended post-turkey hibernation, the CrunchPad was palpably close to launch and then fell apart at the last minute a few weeks ago. Fusion Garage bailed on Arrington’s team because the latter reportedly couldn’t deliver. Since then, Fusion Garage rebadged the device the JooJoo, which coincidentally is scheduled to be available for pre-order today.

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By now everyone is aware of the epic fail that was the Crunchpad. An almost-great American story of loose vision turned marketable reality, Michael Arrington’s baby was reported dead across the blogosphere last week.

Arrington, the TechCrunch editor, envisioned creating a simple Web tablet, known as the CrunchPad, and then commissioned manufacturer Fusion Garage to build it. The device was supposed to welcome in the holiday season with a Black Friday kick-off, but instead we got word that it would never come to market. According to Arrington, Fusion Garage had decided to build and sell the device itself, essentially cutting his team out. Since his side owned half the rights, it looked like the tablet would never see daylight.

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TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington loves a good tech leak, so I’m not totally convinced that pricing and specs on his CrunchPad Web tablet leaked by accident. Nonetheless, we know more about the touch screen device than we did before, including an estimated street price of $400. The CrunchPad measures 12.8 inches by 7.8 inches, and 0.74 inches thick. Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity is built-in, and there’s one USB port for a keyboard or mouse. The OS will have a virtual keyboard, plus an accelerometer for adjusting to portrait or landscape more. The other specs are netbook-like, with a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor and 1 GB of RAM. Where did all this information come from? An interview with the manufacturers in a Singapore newspaper. Way to keep those mouths shut, Mike. [Straits Times via VentureBeat]