"At this point, Brown and the Individual Defendants…entered into an explicit oral agreement as to their respective interests in their joint undertaking to develop the Application…That explicit agreement was that their interests in the venture would be equally distributed, i.e. each of them would have 1/3 ownership and profit interests in the joint venture/partnership."

Yeah, verbal agreements aren't worth squat. At best, you get a settlement, at worst you get nothing. I'm surprised these guys didn't sign contracts amongst themselves.