{"id":39696,"date":"2023-10-20T15:03:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/mark-zuckerberg-testifies-in-explosive-legal-battle-against-facebook-and-oculus-as-game-developer-seeks-us2-billion-in-damages-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:03:55","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:03:55","slug":"mark-zuckerberg-testifies-in-explosive-legal-battle-against-facebook-and-oculus-as-game-developer-seeks-us2-billion-in-damages-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/mark-zuckerberg-testifies-in-explosive-legal-battle-against-facebook-and-oculus-as-game-developer-seeks-us2-billion-in-damages-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Zuckerberg testifies in explosive legal battle against Facebook and Oculus, as game developer seeks $US2 billion in damages – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mark Zuckerberg has appeared in court to testify against allegations that virtual reality startup Oculus, which Facebook acquired in 2014 for more than $US2 billion ($2.6 billion), was built on stolen code.<\/p>\n

American game developer ZeniMax Media is seeking $US2 billion in damages for lost\u00a0intellectual property and “trade secret misappropriation”<\/a>\u00a0after\u00a0raising initial accusations against Oculus\u00a0back in 2014.<\/p>\n

ZeniMax Media claims the Oculus team, including chief technology officer and former ZeniMax employee John Carmack, stole VR-related source code<\/a> and confidential information.\u00a0It also claims Facebook acquired Oculus\u00a0without doing sufficient due diligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hear more about startup legal battles on The Audacity to Fail podcast<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A lawyer representing Zenimax called it \u201cone of the biggest technology heists ever\u201d in an opening statement to the jury,\u00a0Business Insider<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>reports.<\/p>\n

“I’m aware of the claims. I’m here because I think they’re false and I believe it’s important to testify to that,” Zuckerberg said\u00a0in court.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg says he was introduced to Oculus through Silicon Valley heavyweight Marc Andreessen and wanted to acquire the startup to accelerate Facebook\u2019s foray into virtual reality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg added that Oculus’ VR technology was not even fully developed when Facebook bought it,\u00a0Reuters<\/em> <\/a>reports.<\/p>\n

But ZeniMax Media lawyer Tony Sammi hit back.<\/p>\n

“Improving on that technology doesn’t make it yours,” Sammi said.<\/p>\n

“If you steal my bike, paint it and put a bell on it, does that make it your bike?”<\/p>\n

But Zuckerberg remains adamant Facebook did nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is pretty common when you announce a big deal or do something like that all kinds of people come out of the woodwork and claim that they just own some portion of the deal,\u201d Zuckerberg said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike most people in the court, I\u2019ve never even heard of ZeniMax before. I know that our legal team would look into this and examine but they aren\u2019t going to take a lot of my time on something they don\u2019t think is credible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trial continues and a verdict is expected<\/a> after three weeks.<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and iTunes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Zuckerberg has appeared in court to testify against allegations that virtual reality startup Oculus, which Facebook acquired in 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,20,1,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}