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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!
His presidency will only end in disaster. Now is the time to prepare. This is what you should consider a MINIMUM of supplies --
1) 1 year of canned and non-perishable food per person. .308 or 30-06 hunting rifle with scope, 12ga shotgun, AR-15, .22 rifle, .45 ACP pistol and several thousand rounds of ammunition and dozens of magazines.
2) 2 gallons of water per person, enough for 3 months (stabilize with bleach).
3) Gravity-fed water filter.
4) Ham 2M and HF radios.
5) UHF business band radios (one per person).
6)
7) Wireless driveway alarms (used a perimeter alarms).
8) Extensive medical/surgical kit.
9) Wood (preferable) or kerosene stove and chimney cleaning equipment.
10) Chainsaw and 2-cycle oil.
11) Wood cutting/splitting equipment.
12) Eneloop or other LSD AA batteries.
13) Battery-operated lighting (lanterns, flashlights, headlamps, etc).
14) Solar panels and battery charging trays.
15) Fire extinguisher.
16) Several large plastic tarps, duct tape, and paracord.
17) Fuel siphon.
18) Camouflage netting.
Plus all of the basics that would go into any type of "survival" kit such as fire starters, knives, etc. (per person)
If the budget allows --
19) Gen 3+ night vision equipment. .50 caliber rifle and scope.
20)
21) Wideband communication receiver with PC-based digital mode decoding software.
22) All-terrain vehicle.
23) Extensive set of mechanics tools.
* For your electronic devices, standardize on AA's and direct 12V inputs. Use Anderson Powerpoles throughout.
Please add to this list as you see fit.
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!
Dear zenimax you are the worst. I hope zenimax dies in a fire and all their employees and daughter companies go on to better places. May zenimax rupture at the seams and may their litigious leaders get the justice they deserve. (A rectum full of old rusting Boston dynamics prototypes on maximum power)
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.
Forgive my legal ignorance (IANAL :), what does 'false designation' mean?
Since Morrowind either, with later games for the most part lacking features of earlier ones while mostly aping other games a generation behind whenever they publish.
Also they apparently STILL can't be bothered to fix glaringly obvious bugs that should have been picked up in QA in any of their games. You see the same shit going on in FO3/NV/4 and TES4/5/O as you saw in earlier iterations of their games, only with slightly fancier graphics or weapons animations. Hell, most of the new 'innovative' features are ripped off from previous generation mods, rather than being stuff Bethesda innovated themselves.
Hopefully no one will be dumb enough to work with Carmack again after this fiasco.
Why should we listen to anything you say? You're the one responsible for the bucket on head bug in Skyrim.
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.
There will be YEARS worth of appeals on this.. Trust me...
In the end, only the lawyers will make anything.
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.
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.
I'm guessing it's the same court where all tech law-suits go, because that's the only place you win.
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