Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#81

Post by kgwgk » Wed, Feb 01, 2017, 11:35 PM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #20

kafkaesq wrote: post #16

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg told CNBC's Julia Boorstin that she was "disappointed in certain elements of the decision." Sandberg added she was "considering our options to appeal," and the verdict was "not material to our financials." Sure, FB has a lot of money. But still -- $500M is "not material" to their finances?

Related: I believe you can take offset such a settlement from profits to reduce taxes. Never really understood the rationale for this. Seems pretty arbitrary and another example of how corporations are often favored over humans.

What's to understand? When a company pays your salary or the rent for your office that also means less profit and therefore less taxes. But probably the company would be glad to pay less in salaries and rents even if that meant paying higher taxes.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#82

Post by TAForObvReasons » Wed, Feb 01, 2017, 11:52 PM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #76

doctorpangloss wrote: post #27

Large fines like these, even if the facts are clear, do not support competition and seem anti-consumer and anti-innovation. Either the fines should be smaller or the laws changed to better balance what concretely happened: a poaching of a key employee that led to the development of a big product. That being said, Facebook doesn't really seem to have its R&D figured out. It's poisoned by bad leadership. Palmer Luckey…

Being hired to work on projects, using your companies time and money, and then taking that project to another company yourself, is stealing. Stealing is very anti-competative, and massively increases risk in investment. If anything, this case shows that you can steal a companies resources to make your own products, and if its a good idea then lawsuits are just a cost of doing business.

I don't know why you are being downvoted. When you are on company time or working on company resources, your output generally belongs to the company unless you have a special exemption. The cavalier attitude by many people in SV towards IP is somewhat tragic

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#83

Post by Mizza » Wed, Feb 01, 2017, 11:55 PM UTC

JohnDotAwesome wrote: post #65

daenz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

There's a story in Masters of Doom where Carmack and Romero do just that. If I recall correctly, they would take company (Softdisk I believe) computers at night because they were more powerful than their home computers, and use them to develop their own games. I think they even worked on their own games on company time. I might be getting the details wrong on that one, but sounds like Carmack dgaf (or just doesn't th…

Carmack is way more of a badass punk than his demeanor makes him out to be. When he was 14, he got sentenced to a year in juvie for stealing his school's Apple IIs. He broke in using thermite. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack#Early_life

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#84

Post by EugeneOZ » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 12:02 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #41

_m8fo wrote: post #9

Facebook bought Oculus for $3B [1] 16% of the purchase price for infringing on an NDA is pretty damaging. I believe that'll be a good deterrent in the future. [1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-actually-paid-3-billi... (thanks for the correction, Cozumuel)

A deterrent for what? What's the lesson here? If you're a student don't sign an NDA on the off chance you'll later found a company and get acquired by Facebook for $2B? The real takeaway here is, if you have world-class tech guys working for you then don't support them, just tie them up in contracts, and when they leave and become successful you can sue them to get 25% of whatever they made, at zero risk to you.

World-class tech guys should also respect contracts they sign. I respect his works and achievements, but I think his actions in this case were unfair. I only hope I don't know all details and my opinion is based on not all facts. I'd like to know my opinion is wrong.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#85

Post by Zooper » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 12:06 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #55

aresant wrote: post #44

If the original complaint is to be believed(1) - which Juror's found credible -the course of events, tldr was something like this: - Zenimax bought ID software for >$100m(1) on June 24, 2009. - Carmack signed up with Zenimax for an earn-out / golden-handcuffs agreement that ended in June of 2013. - Carmack was enthralled with VR. - Carmack found Palmer via an internet forum, reached out to get a rift to try. - Carmac…

What in the world was Carmack doing, working on another company's project, using your current company's time and resources? Don't get me wrong, the guy is a genius, and I love nearly everything he has a hand in, but you would think that with his level of seniority, some alarm bells would have gone off in his head.

I love how it's assumed, taken as axiom, instead of absurdity, that it's even possible for a company to own a individual's time and mind by contract.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#86

Post by funnyfacts365 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 12:08 AM UTC

AmirS2 wrote: post #31

doctorpangloss wrote: post #27

Large fines like these, even if the facts are clear, do not support competition and seem anti-consumer and anti-innovation. Either the fines should be smaller or the laws changed to better balance what concretely happened: a poaching of a key employee that led to the development of a big product. That being said, Facebook doesn't really seem to have its R&D figured out. It's poisoned by bad leadership. Palmer Luckey…

> what concretely happened: a poaching of a key employee Not quite the reason for the fine according to TFA: > Instead, it ruled that Luckey, who was working as a contractor for Zenimax before starting the Kickstarter for the Oculus Rift headset, violated his non-disclosure agreement,

Offtopic but, why do people feel it's alright to refer to the article as The Fucking Article and on some other stuff they get all mad because someone used a curse word? The HN crowd is bipolar...

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#87

Post by cpncrunch » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 12:08 AM UTC

openmosix wrote: post #72

cpncrunch wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they sued in May 2014, and the acquisition closed in July 2014, so it looks like facebook just didn't do adequate due diligence.

Or entirely possible they knew about it, dismissed it as "frivolous case" or factored it in the price paid.

Well, clearly it wasn't frivolous, so if they did think that then it would be evidence of them not doing proper due diligence.

I guess it's possible they just didn't care. What's another half billion dollars to facebook?

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#88

Post by gpderetta » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 12:19 AM UTC

Idontagree wrote: post #71

spatulon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is personally out $150m, according to the article.

That seems like a lot, I didn't think he was worth that much, maybe I'm undervaluing his net worth. Is there a value for that anywhere?

Well, he had to stop playing with rockets as he was running out of FU money...

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#89

Post by abandonliberty » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 12:20 AM UTC

bbernard wrote: post #2

For those interested, the official court document can be accessed here: https://www.scribd.com/document/274211118/Judge-denies-Faceb... It describes in details what happened.

It describes in detail the ZeniMax allegations.

> Though the Court uses definite language, the information is based on allegations only

I highly recommend it. It provides much more perspective and appears to be a strong case. The decisions - both in their favor and against - appear reasonable based on publicly available information.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Pay $500M in Oculus Lawsuit

#90

Post by RestlessMind » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 12:21 AM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #27

Large fines like these, even if the facts are clear, do not support competition and seem anti-consumer and anti-innovation. Either the fines should be smaller or the laws changed to better balance what concretely happened: a poaching of a key employee that led to the development of a big product. That being said, Facebook doesn't really seem to have its R&D figured out. It's poisoned by bad leadership. Palmer Luckey…

> Large fines like these, even if the facts are clear, do not support competition and seem anti-consumer and anti-innovation.

Supporting competition or being pro-consumer / pro-innovation should not come at the cost of individual property rights, which is one of the cornerstones of wealth creation. I can agree with curtailing property rights in some extreme cases (eg. antitrust litigations or eminent domain), but I don't see any reason to do so in the case of Zenimax.