Jury Orders Oculus To Pay $500 Million In ZeniMax Lawsuit (polygon.com) 77
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: A Dallas, Texas jury today awarded half a billion dollars to ZeniMax after finding that Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, and by extension Oculus, failed to comply with a non-disclosure agreement he signed. In awarding ZeniMax $500 million, the jury also said that Oculus did not misappropriate trade secrets as contended by ZeniMax. Of the $500 million, Oculus is paying out $200 million for breaking the NDA and $50 million for copyright infringement. Oculus and Luckey each have to pay $50 million for false designation. And Iribe has to pay $150 million for the same, final count. The decision came back Wednesday afternoon following two and a half days of deliberation in the case being tried in a United States District court in the North District of Texas. Both id Software co-founder John Carmack and Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey were in the courtroom when the verdict was read. During closing arguments, ZeniMax attorney Anthony Sammi called the incident a heist and argued that ZeniMax should be awarded $2 billion in compensation and another $2 billion in punitive damages. Oculus attorney Beth Wilkinson argued that the multibillion-dollar lawsuit was driven by ZeniMax's embarrassment, jealousy and anger, not facts. It remains unclear what sort of impact this will have on the daily retail sale of the Oculus Rift headsets.
Facebook's status (Score:5, Funny)
[X] Rekt
[ ] Not rekt
We'll see what happens on appeal, and what this means to companies that poach employees in the future.
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wtf is a rekt
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We're going to need a burn unit over here!
Impact? (Score:3)
It remains unclear what sort of impact this will have on the daily retail sale of the Oculus Rift headsets.
Probably none -- at least, not until after Oculus' appeal is heard.
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They probably didn't absorb the company though, they kept it separate from Facebook. Oculus the company is worth $2B but I highly doubt they have even 5% of that value in assets, if nothing else they just have loads of debt and a bunch of imaginary property worth $2B. If such judgment gets held up, Oculus will be forced into bankruptcy.
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The owners/stakeholders/debtors got paid 2B by facepoop to sell the company to them. Doesn't mean the company owns $2B in stocks because that wouldn't be a sale.
FWIW, this is why you read employment contracts. (Score:5, Informative)
I used to work for Bethesda, a ZeniMax company. Never seen a more legally aggressive employment agreement, I had to reject initial offer until they added an addendum. Without it was essentially a multi-year multi-industry no-compete phrased to get around state laws banning no-compete clauses...
fault of shitty managers priority lists (Score:4, Interesting)
this is because asshole managers who reprioritise the bug list, and make some obvious quick fixers so -1000 its not funny.
My moto is, if im coding after my 40hrs/week, its free time, and I can do whatever fucking bug I like. Since officially, I am coding for free, not being paid over time, fuck your priority lists. I will fix whatever god damn bug I like thats fun to fix, or quick to fix.
Always the priorities are bull shit any way.
There should be a dual layer of priorities where quick, simple , 5 minute fixers should be as high priority as show stoppers.
Even if a bug is so low priority, but embarrassing, but fixable in 5 seconds, FIX IT. Or we should be allowed to fix whatever god damn bug we emotionally fucking feel like it to feel happy, or to get more Bugs/Day done.
We coders arent robots, we have intelligence that we should be allowed to override our slave masters wishes.
Re: (Score:2)
You're all messed up and wrong:
10 kilograms zip ties
25 kilogram duct tape (various colors)
100 kg Doritos
500 kg coffee beans
Redundant coffee bean grinders / brewers (avoid K-cups)
Enough solar cells to run a laptop
Spare laptop
Porn as desired
Reruns of Firefly, Red Dwarf, Alien
Am I missing something?
Re: Trump Administration Survival List (Score:1)
McGyver list
1. Paperclip
Muddy waters (Score:5, Interesting)
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North District of Texas...? (Score:3, Insightful)
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The Eastern District of Texas is the patent troll haven. This case was in Dallas, not Texarkana or Tyler.
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You're thinking of East Texas. But I do think it's funny that the mere act of an IP-related trial happening somewhere in Texas, is enough to give the whole thing the stench of illegitimacy. It's funny because it's true.
Congress should burn that (East Texas) court to the ground and re-instate it somewhere else, just to try to repair the reputation. I'm not saying they can't still have it be corrupt and biased, just that they need to shake it off because it's gotten to the point where everyone knows somethin
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Would it be possible to write into all your contracts that none of your products could be used in the east district of Texas to avoid this? I suppose even if it was they'd just go up the chain to the next most terrible district.
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No, that wasn't about hiring Carmack away, that was about the code he took with him.
The jury didn't feel it was proven that the code Carmack took with him was related to VR shit that he then used at Oculus.
But of course it fucking was. That's likely why the amounts are so huge for the NDA shit the jury agreed was absolutely proven.
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The code Carmack tool was for Doom 3. You know, the very same code HE personally wrote, owned, and released under GPL before selling ID Software.
false designation? (Score:1)
Forgive my legal ignorance (IANAL :), what does 'false designation' mean?
Re:false designation? (Score:5, Informative)
It's when you sell stuff and lie about its origin. E.g. If stuff comes from China, you can't just say it's "Made in US".
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If stuff comes from China, you can't just say it's "Made in US".
Not yet, but give Trump a few days.
or... (Score:2)
Of course Oculus isn't going to just hand over $500M to Zenimax, there will probably be a battle of attrition costing both decades of expensive legal appeals until the first one cracks.
Of course Zuckerberg has the resources to do the above, but that would be expensive (although not as expensive as $500M). It seems to me a far more cost-effective alternative would be to have Oculus sell its VR tech to Facebook, then just let Oculus collapse and go bust, taking its 500M debts and poor management team with it.
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Not true. Theres no legal requirement that one company _has_ to bail out another (even if they own the failing company). Zuk could easily let the comapny go bust. It would also be seen as reasonable that Oculus had to sell their tech in order to meet their new financial obligations.
This isn't really a copyright dispute. (Score:2)
This isn't really a copyright dispute. It's a labor dispute.
This reminds me of the John Fogerty vs Fantasy Records dispute.
After Fogerty left Credence he went on a solo career and he was sued by Fantasy for sounding to much like himself.
If Bethesda can't prove that Cormack didn't copy any code that They own, I don't see how they have a case.
This sets a terrible precedent for the rites of programmers and frankly I think the only reason they're getting away with it is because Facebook is the parent company.
More specifically, the musical notes copied Creede (Score:2)
More specifically, the claim was that the music of "The Old Man Down the Road" was essentially a copy of "Run Through the Jungle". Fantasy owned the copyright to Run, and therefore also Old Man, *if* Old Man was a copy of Run.
The jury found that it was not a copy. Judgement for Fogerty.
Fogerty then sought attorney's fees; the court ruled that Fantasy's suit was not frivolous and denied fees. Fogerty took the issue of fees it to the Supreme Court, who agreed with the District Court - attorney's fees *may* b
Not settled by any stretch of the imagination (Score:4, Insightful)
Going to an appeals court near you in 3, 2, 1.
Seriously, this is round 1 out of 5, especially with the amount of money we are talking here.
When trolls win... (Score:1)
Just because he made the mistake of working a bit on VR while he was still employed at Zenimax, even though they haven't done anything VR related, ever... These kind of company policies should be illegal.
Full Court Record (Score:2)
Disclosure: I run Docket Alarm.
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They shouldn't but the OP was being respectful via full disclosure.