Frankly there is nothing worse than seeing a legal notice. At best it means thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and added stress/lost time. At worst its the end of a company.
SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
101–110 of 478 posts
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#102Well that is unfortunate. I would not want to be in Simula's position, I'm sure they've got enough on their plate without having to deal with stuff like this that they barely have an impact on in the first place. I understand that Meta needs to prove they're not a monopoly, and apparently the way to do that is through other companies laying their cards on the table, but my goodness would I feel uncomfortable giving c…
Surely if Meta need another company to help them prove something, Meta should have to compensate them. Sure, the government should be able to COMMAND a company to appear, but for one legal entity to COMMAND another legal entity to perform work and make an appearance at a place, in my mind as a Brit, seems entirely wrong.
Time to throw my Quest on eBay, not sure I want to be a part of this.
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who pays for all the costs associated with this? Can you abuse the legal system to drive a company into bankruptcy by repeatedly subpoenaing them?
People are really (really) misinterpreting this. The OP isn't being sued, they aren't being attacked as a competitor to Meta. (In fact the obvious guess here was that they're being asked to testify in this antitrust case to the fact that their product is successful!) A subpoena is just a demand for testimony. The court wants to "know what you know" so it can make a better decision. Testimony before courts of law is p…
Costs don't have anything to do with being sued or not. A subpoena to a person is relatively easy to respond to (unless you need a lawyer to help you negotiate the fifth amendment for reasons), but this will cost time and money, both things that we all know startups have in vast quantities.
If the answer is not Meta pays, then why isn't it?
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one is accused of antitrust practices (as Meta is by the FTC), your defense is to show that there's actually competition. It's not that Meta that wants the documents for corporate espionage (or whatever), but that they want to prove that SimulaVR is competing just fine in the market that contains Meta. This is explained in the article, which many here clearly didn't read past the headline. This is roughly the same…
So someone is sued for anticompetitive practices and that gives them alibi for looking directly into others' books, and they're just supposed to trust Meta will forget all the information afterwards?
IANAL, but AIUI in theory all major competitors get subpoenaed and then everything they say becomes part of the public record - so everyone sees everyone's cards laid out.
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
So someone is sued for anticompetitive practices and that gives them alibi for looking directly into others' books, and they're just supposed to trust Meta will forget all the information afterwards?
IANAL, but AIUI in theory all major competitors get subpoenaed and then everything they say becomes part of the public record - so everyone sees everyone's cards laid out.
How exactly does that change anything? Meta is a 100000x larger company, they can do much more with that info than the others. And what about foreign competitors? What about not yet founded/stealth competitors? What about competitors only maybe planning to release a product (e.g. Apple)?
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#106If I were simulaVR, I would make this very painful to meta. You would put together business plans that literally say no other vendor can compete against meta. Basically confirm the anti-competition. That even that subpeona is anticompetive and an attempt to further crush them. Malicious compliance the entire way.
I think the subpoena is mostly for existing records and novel records of existing plans. IANAL, but I think if you were to create novel documents that were most certainly less than honest for the purpose of swaying the case, there could be legal consequences for you. Courts aren't stupid - if it becomes apparent that you are attempting to maliciously comply, they can still get you based on your apparent intent.
Yeah, don't go creating bullshit in response, but anyone who is remotely connected to anything Meta, Google, Apple are involved in should have in their documents details on why they won't be competing with the big names.
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#107If this is actually how US's justice system works it is even more bonkers than I thought. Could someone versed in this legal system explain, please? Is is any accused that can demand documents/data/free research from vaguely related third parties, or only large companies? Enquiring minds want to know!
In-between Meta’s “to show that we have competition, we would like to show company Foo’s documents on X, Y and Z” and this subpoena is a judge who decides on whether those documents would help them reach a decision in this case, and whether it’s reasonable to ask Foo to do that work.
Also, the data you provide goes to the court, not (directly) to Meta.
I also think you can ask the court to keep (parts of) the data from the public record. That would require an argument as to why making it public would harm you.
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are really (really) misinterpreting this. The OP isn't being sued, they aren't being attacked as a competitor to Meta. (In fact the obvious guess here was that they're being asked to testify in this antitrust case to the fact that their product is successful!) A subpoena is just a demand for testimony. The court wants to "know what you know" so it can make a better decision. Testimony before courts of law is p…
Costs don't have anything to do with being sued or not. A subpoena to a person is relatively easy to respond to (unless you need a lawyer to help you negotiate the fifth amendment for reasons), but this will cost time and money, both things that we all know startups have in vast quantities. If the answer is not Meta pays, then why isn't it?
I told you: The recipient pays as part of their civic duty. If you want protection under the law for your own grievances, you need to be prepared to assist the court in the adjudication of the grievances of others.
And the practical reason is that poor people have the right to petition courts for redress of grievances too. You're upset because Zuckerberg happens to be rich, so this seems unfair. But what if the startup had to sue someone and needed testimony from someone else to prove their case? You think they should have to pay just to get facts before the court?
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mark wants to be able to sell apps and ads on his end-to-end controlled platform, that is it. He missed the boat on browsers and smartphones, so he is aiming for total monopoly of what he believes is the next-big-thing™.
I'm still skeptical that it is The Next Big Thing. I wonder if Zuckerberg suspects it might not be as well but, hey, Hail Mary!
My bet would be more on AR than VR, and maybe it's not the next big thing but the big thing after the next one.
But that's fine for Meta. Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp might all be running out of growth, but they are all big enough that Meta can afford to invest in something that will only pay off in a decade or two, as long as the payoff is big enough. Gaming-VR headsets are just a good way to get the technology into people's hands right now, and iterate on it.
Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc
#110If I were simulaVR, I would make this very painful to meta. You would put together business plans that literally say no other vendor can compete against meta. Basically confirm the anti-competition. That even that subpeona is anticompetive and an attempt to further crush them. Malicious compliance the entire way.
Judges HATE malicious compliance.
Best case is Simula can file an injunction along the lines of not being a competitor or not having any relevance and wishing to keep their trade secrets...secret.
Otherwise, comply with only existing documentation. For example, if they requested fine-grained details on metrics that don't exist, then the correct response to that is "doesn't exist".