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Jury Orders Oculus To Pay $500 Million In ZeniMax Lawsuit (polygon.com)
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.
[X] Rekt
[ ] Not rekt
We'll see what happens on appeal, and what this means to companies that poach employees in the future.
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.
Breakfast served all day!
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...
How is Palmer supposed to pay for all my Russian shills now? This verdict is SAD and the judge is a LOSER!
This is a case of a smart person being dumb. If you want technology to be yours, you don't let it touch any machine owned by another company and you do it all on your own time. How a person could muddy the waters like this when the stakes are so high is beyond me.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
FaceFuck!
Zenimax is in MD, Oculus in CA...yet the trial is in the North District of Texas...? I've been around Slashdot long enough to understand why there are so many trials like this in the "North District of Texas" but it's still baloney that lawyers can shop the district they want to file in. I for one would like my criminal trial to be held in the state which is most lenient to whatever my crime is....
"The jury also said that Oculus did not misappropriate trade secrets as contended by ZeniMax."
Sounds like the Jury thought poaching John Carmack was legal. If Oculus had just been more patient, listened to a good lawyer, and done more VR experiments to legally cover their ass, and used open source games, such as Quake 3, they could have walked away without paying anyone.
Maybe the court of appeals will knock down the Oculus payments.
you left out internet,
you ignorant slob!
Forgive my legal ignorance (IANAL :), what does 'false designation' mean?
Why?
It was written with the assumption there would be no infrastructure. You could add networking gear and cabling if you wanted to set up some type of ad-hoc intranet with your neighbors. Some of the smaller switches run off a 12V wall-wart so would be suitable for emergency power systems.
Hopefully no one will be dumb enough to work with Carmack again after this fiasco.
OK. I'll bite.
24. Dogs that bark.
25. TA-1 field telephones and appropriate wire.
26. Diesel generator, fuel cans and Sta-Bil.
27. I'm not sure what they're called, but they hold a shotgun shell and activate by means of a trip wire.
28. Books on wild edible plants and herbal medicine.
29. Other identification guides like Janes, etc. for military vehicles and equipment.
30. Binoculars.
31. Smoke grenades or means to make large smoke screens (dripping power steering fluid into a hot exhaust pipe works very well on vehicles).
32. Hand-held metal detector.
33. Handcuff and leg irons for detainees.
34. Megaphone or loud PA system.
35. Printer and large supply of paper to print propaganda flyers.
36. Drone.
Why should we listen to anything you say? You're the one responsible for the bucket on head bug in Skyrim.
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?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Slashdotter-specific addendum
37. 6TB of porn
38. Mom, to do laundry
38. A girlfriend (maybe get two, since world is ending)
39. Nunchucks for self-defense
You forgot throwing stars.
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. After that, Zuck could just start a whole new VR company with the VR tech he already bought. Hell he could even hire many of the same people back. If bet if he called the new company Occulus (i.e. not Oculus), I bet hardly anyone would even notice anything changed.
40. You'll want stuff to run a large garden: seeds, gardening tools, fertilizer, fencing, etc.
41. If you can only have one type of animal, chickens are probably the best choice. Goats would be a close second.
42. Well with hand-operated pump.
43. Fishing gear.
44. Root cellar or some other way to keep food cool.
45. Pressure and water bath canners.
46. Several hundred pint and half-pint mason jars.
47. Composting toilet or septic tank system.
48. Windmills or micro-hydro to augment the solar setup.
Please add to this list as you see fit.
24) War elephants
25) Peanuts
26) Bistatic NLOS radar
27) Wind vane powered ground water pump
28) 10000 ft room temperature superconducting cable
29) Binoculars with optical frequency computational Fourier optics
30) Bicycle with spare tubes and manual air pump
31) 40 meter telescope with adaptive optics and laser guidestar
32) Dewar capable of storing 20 tonnes of liquid helium
33) HFT glue backed heat shrink kit
- Non-lethal weapons are also useful and probably overlooked. I would have an assortment to include mace, tasers, bean-bag rounds, riot helmets, shields, etc.
- Lock picks
- Smoke and CO alarms
- Very tall and sturdy ladder
- Bolt cutters
- Off-road vehicle with front and rear-mounted winches
- Air compressor
- Outdoor grill (the stone type, not a barbecue)
- Cast iron cookware
24) A disguise kit will all kinds of makeup, wigs, beards, ethnic clothing, etc. in case you have to sneak past a checkpoint. A burqa would probably be useful to conceal your identity without looking suspicious.
25) Concealed weapons like a cane gun, pen knife, etc.
26) Pinhole and spy cameras
27) Small microphones and transmitters
28) An assortment of poisons
29) Aston-Martin
30) Vodka (for martinis)
NV wasn't made by Bethesda, and any bugs were either leftovers from the Gamebryo abomination they call an engine, or Obsidian's doing. At least, IMO, Obsidian had the best 3D Fallout game underneath those bugs (and I won't deny or downplay just how buggy the game was at launch)
McGyver list
1. Paperclip
There will be YEARS worth of appeals on this.. Trust me...
In the end, only the lawyers will make anything.
Slashdotter do not do girls...
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.
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.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
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.
This lawsuit would have never eventuated if Facebook had not purchased Oculus. As soon a Facebook was bankrolling Oculus, Zenimax must have thought all of their Christmases would have come at once.
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* be awarded if the suit if frivolous or brought in bad faith, the statute does not require that fees be awarded in all cases.
29) Binoculars with optical frequency computational Fourier optics
Doesn't any lens effectively perform a Fourier transform?
All of the court documents are available at the link below, including lawyer arguments and questions from the jury: https://www.docketalarm.com/ca...
Disclosure: I run Docket Alarm.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
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.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Bethesda's version of Gamebryo is a bit like the Ship of Theseus, it's has so many bits pulled off and bolted back on in a desperate attempt to keep it shambling along for just-one-more-game that it's hardly fair to call it Gamebryo anymore.
The only original code left is the bit that moves and rotates objects so that anything placed within 1 foot of a wall automatically clips through.
I'm guessing it's the same court where all tech law-suits go, because that's the only place you win.
1) 10 pounds of weed(dried)
2) a pound of phsycadelic mushroom(dried)
3) spore prints and marijuana seeds.
Also handy are
37. Multiple rocket launcher vehicle
38. Kilometers of barbed wire
39. 5 megawatt natural uranium nuclear reactor
40. Plutonium processing plant
41. Mig 29
42. Phased array radars
43. Anti-aerial missile enclosed in a tube where the top blows off and the missile is ejected before firing up
After reviewing the court proceedings, it is abundantly clear this should be overturned on appeal; assuming the lack of a miscarriage of justice
This was all about the pay day for ZeniMax, and not based on the facts of the case, but of dumb jury's buying suave lawyers arguments and grand descriptions