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Comment by MitchellKnight | Hacker News Reader

> However, the jury also found Wednesday that Oculus didn’t violate any trade secrets. 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, according to a Polygon report.

I don't understand how this works. Why does Facebook have to pay $500M over an NDA violation between an individual and his previous company? It seems like ZeniMax should only have a case against Palmer Luckey.

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TechCrunch says "Oculus pays $200M for NDA [breach of contract], $50M for false des[ignation], $50M for copyright [infringement], Luckey pays $50M false des, Iribe pays $150M false des" [1]

So it's more like FB/Oculus pay 300m, Luckey 50m, Iribe (former CEO) 150m. It looks like the judgement is against Oculus and their execs, which misrepresented what was sold to FB. It seems like they were found innocent of theft, which would have been more the more damaging charge going forward IMHO.

As it is, it's a big cash penalty and that's it; which could mean FB might choose to cut their losses and just pay, rather than risk going through an appeal.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/01/jury-awards-zenimax-500-mi...

If Alice hires Bob, and Bob sells Alice's information to Charlie, and Charlie makes $2bn out of it, then it seems fair to hold Charlie responsible as well. Otherwise all you're doing is creating a market for sacrificial goats to take the fall while the company making the money gets away clean.

If Charlie doesn't know Bob's information is tainted, all you're doing is punishing the innocent for a crime they didn't commit.

It's called due diligence. The fact that Facebook didn't do it was a factor in the trial.

Because Oculus (now part of Facebook) was built on the NDA breach. (It is the court's opinion that) Luckey misappropriated trade secrets, formed that misappropriation into Oculus, and then sold that to FB. IANAL, but I suspect it's a 'receipt of stolen goods' argument - FB should have known through it's due diligence that what they were buying was stolen property.

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