Outcome of $4 Billion ZeniMax v. Oculus Verdict

[kevinw729]

Today is the day that the outcome of this first lawsuit is expected. Interested in everyone's position before the verdict is called.

There is a very in-depth feature on this cases issues here:
http://www.roadtovr.com/zenimax-vs-oculus-facebook-vr-lawsuit-court-case-summary-verdict/2/

Interesting that legal experts are seeing the breaking of the NDA as a pivotal component of the decision.

NOTICE - This discussion is ONLY for posts about the legal battle(s) and outcome - if anyone tries to hijack the discussion or Troll post here, I will request the moderator to remove their posts - and report them.

[kevinw729]

Yep @stargate88  - I can see your point. But let me look a little more deeper into the situation.

FB (board) has found out that they have invested some $3b+ into a group of individuals that have "dissembled" to them about their contractual obligations. They have also breached a series of NDA's and also look to have laid FB open to accusations of patent breaches. That have failed to achieve suitable customer support, and are also liable to a second contractual dispute that will impede further business.

Now, I know some "supporters" of OVR will say this is just a 'simple' problem, but as a past executive of a Fortune 500 company, I say... you know nothing!

[brackus1]

Half a billion dollars.  That's quite a big payout.  Should have bought Oculus for a dollar.  Zenimax would have only gotten a nickel.

[zproxy]

would be fun to see what parts of the SDK were considered a copy of zenimax source

[Rifts]

Hopefully Facebook will just hand over 500m$ to Oculus and pretend like nothing happened. Because if not, Oculus is pretty much screwed. Keep in mind that 500 million is the income of about 800 000 Rifts sold. Or an equivalent of selling the next 1,6 million Rifts at a 50% discount.

[assettomio]

Zenimax found 92% of his harddrive was wiped? That is such unbelievable bullshit, if you do a wipe that will make the data unrecoverable, you would have to do a Dod 5220.22m, which does not wipe only the used space, it wipes the empty space too, completely, 100%.. And it does so several times, making even that first wipe unrecoverable..
So if the person that works for Zenimax has made that statement, then that person is by definition lying, and doesn't know a single shit about what he's talking about.
It is impossible, absolutely without a doubt impossible, to see how much data was wiped if the data is wiped this way, and if the data was not wiped this way, they could have recovered it easily

[elboffor]

But jc googled how to wipe a hard drive, so it must be true. Zenimax said so.

[RorschachPhoeni]

elboffor said:

But jc googled how to wipe a hard drive, so it must be true. Zenimax said so.

Yep. Palmer wasn't able to build a HMD and Carmack was not able to wipe a hard drive without research.

[JakemanOculus]

Guys... take all "expert" witnesses with many salt grains.  I personally followed the lawsuit between vBulletin and XenForo back in the day.  That case involved paid "expert" witnesses too.  I happened to be very familiar with the code base of both products so I knew better.  Basically those witnesses are paid by the prosecution, biased, and necessarily subjective when it comes to judgment calls like non-literal copying.  You have to understand that these "expert" witnesses are paid to provide their biased opinion on something because other people are not competent to understand it.

I suspect Carmack is right... if the analysis was made public then it would be eviscerated.

"It was ridiculous," he wrote. "Even without being able to read the code on the slides, you could tell the steps varied widely in operation count, were often split up and in different order, and just looked different."

Further questioning the credibility of Oculus' expert, Carmack noted that he himself wasn't allowed to read the full expert report, and said that if the code examples were made public "the internet would have viciously mocked the analysis."

I expect the verdict will be appealed and overturned.

[kevinw729]

This is the perfect reason why correct deliberation and due diligence is undertaken in the acquisition process - you want to avoid having to get down the road into a legal position that involves "experts", as the results can be a minefield. A reason MarkZ was so "unhappy" about having to be questioned in this case.

I expect the verdict will be appealed and overturned.

I think that is more wishful thinking than based on any reality - the jury found the defendants guilty on three of the five elements of the case. There is more a likelihood that the amount may increase due to the confusion over the JC's actions finding.

I will be interested in the findings of who pays legal fees, and also if the amount allotted to damages for the NDA breach may be redressed with a greater amount in line with previous Texas court rulings on contractual law.

[kevinw729]

With $500 Million Worth Of Hindsight, Does Mark Zuckerberg Regret Buying Oculus?

http://uploadvr.com/does-mark-zuckerberg-regret-buying-oculus/