$500 Million Dollar Verdict Against Oculus

Corporate Counsel (John Council with Texas Lawyer) has just announced that a Dallas, Texas jury has awarded $500 million against Facebook owned Oculus to ZeniMax Media in a copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation case.  Interestingly, the article notes that Mark Zuckerberg testified that Facebook only "had just one weekend to conduct a due diligence before completing the deal."  I bet that was a very, very busy weekend for some lawyers.  Whither "Facebook's" virtual reality technology?  It'll be interesting to see how the appeals work out. Please see the article for more information. 

How the Government Can Save Money: Pirate Software

The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Army recently was sued for copyright infringement by breaching a license agreement for software—which the U.S. Army apparently did.  Okay, so that is government not at its best.  The silver lining for the U.S. Army is that the copyright owner settled for $50 million--$130 million less than it would have cost the government to license the software.   The silver lining for the copyright owner is an unexpected check for $50 million and, I would hope, a lot more business.  The nice message for the rest of us is that the U.S. government can hire folks that can create software that works well. 

Here is a portion of the complaint:

In March 2009, Apptricity inadvertently learned that the Army may have been using more Apptricity software than that for which it had procured licenses.   Apptricity employees attended a PD TIS Strategic Capabilities Planning Meeting held March 3-5, 2009 in Richmond, Virginia, where the U.S. Army Program Director stated that the Army was deploying thousands of devices with the Apptricity software.

Anyone need an auditor?

An Interesting Idea: Business Software Alliance Bounty System for Policing and Enforcing IP

The Business Software Alliance wants you!  BSA is offering an End User Reward Program.  Basically, if you report “software piracy” to the BSA, and the BSA investigates and determines piracy exists then you may receive an award.  The BSA defines piracy as: “Unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted software; Purchasing one single copy of software and installing it on multiple computers; and Copying, downloading, sharing, selling or installing multiple copies onto personal or business computers is software theft.”  If you submit a piracy report to the BSA, your information is apparently kept confidential.  If you plan to participate, I suggest you read the terms carefully.  Here is the data on award fees which is apparently calculated based on settlement amount:

Reward Payment Guidelines
Settlement paid by Company	Potential Reward payment
$15,000 - $100,000	Up to $5,000
$100,001 - $200,000	Up to $10,000
$200,001 - $400,000	Up to $20,000
$400,001 - $600,000	Up to $30,000
$600,001 - $800,000	Up to $40,000
$800,001 - $1,000,000	Up to $50,000
$1,000,001 - $2,000,000	Up to $100,000
$2,000,001 - $3,000,000	Up to $150,000
$3,000,001 - $5,000,000	Up to $250,000
$5,000,001 - $10,000,000	Up to $500,000
$10,000,001 - $15,000,000	Up to $750,000
Over $15,000,000	Up to $1,000,000

Is this a good idea?  Are there other similar programs?