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Comment by gshulegaard | Hacker News Reader

This whole situation leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth regarding Zenimax.

So their biggest claim, surrounding Oculus being built on trade secrets, is found false but they get a half-billion dollar payout anyway?

Considering the purported fines could be traced back all the way to practically the original Kickstarter...I wonder if Zenimax would have gotten such a sum had Oculus not been bought by FB for $3B[1]...

...or am I misunderstanding something?

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-actually-paid-3-bill...

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It's the NDA that killed them.

Yeah...but that breach was originally made during the original Kickstarter in 2012.

Aren't most statute of limitations for NDA breaches 3-4 years from original breach?

But even if it's still within the statute of limitations I can't help but get the feeling Zenimax is just trying to cash in on the unlikely success of Oculus.

They sued in 2014 so the clock stops there.

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?

"It's a speeding ticket. Just pay it." -- paraphrasing Zuckerberg's lawyer in The Social Network

The interesting question is whether FB will indemnify Carmack. $150M is a hell of a speeding ticket.

It's not clear whether Carmack was actually the one to get that fine, sounds like it was Iribe.

Having filed suit before the FB acquisition, I am a lot less perturbed.

But a lot of the negative posturing from ZeniMax during the case still rubs me the wrong way.

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