4 ms·

I suppose many weird things happen in $500m cases, but it'd be really unusual to have trial testimony sealed against the agreement of the parties. Pretrial repo

by Digory 10y ago

I suppose many weird things happen in $500m cases, but it'd be really unusual to have trial testimony sealed against the agreement of the parties. Pretrial reports and depositions, sure. Media was apparently there reporting during the expert's trial testimony, and I'd be surprised if they cannot buy a transcript from the court reporter. (http://uploadvr.com/court-oculus-zenimax-last-day/ http://uploadvr.com/court-oculus-zenimax-last-day/) A quick look at the docket shows the expert witness at issue is likely to be David Dobkin of Princeton. That name appears on the docket and in media reports. Let me know if that violates HN norms, but expert witness trial testimony is part of the public, permanent record in almost every case. If a witness is excluded for using unreliable methods, his or her value as an expert is ... diminished.

itsdrewmiller 10y ago
Yeah, this was the part that seemed most important and potentially most unreliable to me. I would like to see where they officially requested that this testimony be made public and were denied.
gregw2 10y ago
Interesting. David Dobkin is the Dean of Faculty at Princeton University who used to be a Computer Science professor there for a very long time before being Dean; his specialty was 3D geometry (not a 3D shader guy, kinda a bit more math-y than applied.) I don't know if he ever presided over code plagarism cases with clever Princeton CS undergrads but since he was department chair for a fair chunk of time, information on that may well provide interesting insight into his methodology and previous experience. (Reviewing papers for various computer graphics entities might also contain additional plagarism experience but that's unlikely to be code-comparison-type plagarism.) Given his CV I would be very surprised whether he has considered abstract syntax trees much since he got his PhD 43 years ago, but I am not convinced by Carmack that is automatically exculpatory. I would consider him a reasonable pick as an expert in 3D geometry and algorithms (although he hasn't been active in the field in 10+ years he did it for a /long/ time which is likely sufficient) and he may have dealt with plagarism of regular text during his career a moderate amount, but he does NOT seem to be an expert in code-plagarism or code similarity. It's interesting that the former is good enough and they didn't need an expert in the latter. In any case, given the positions he's been at, whatever he's getting paid, even $600+/hour, I doubt he /needs/ the money. (If he is in fact the expert witness.)
- gregw2 10y ago
  Seems likely it was David Dobkin: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5q5rf2/software_expert_claims_oculus_copied_code_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5q5rf2/software_exper... https://www.elys.com/people/david-dobkin https://www.elys.com/people/david-dobkin Following up on other posters' comments (thank you!), while Carmack proposed Abstract Syntax Trees based copyright detection, he didn't seem to appreciate the standard court methods for detecting non-syntactical copyright violation for code, the abstract filtration comparison test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...). Dobkin it seems didn't have to rule based on his own opinion or based on some academic method whether there was copying, but whether -- given the very specific method laid out by legal precedent to know whether there was copying, assuming that method was true -- whether when he applied it, it indicated there was copying. That makes a lot more sense to me. Dobkin would be a perfectly suitable expert for doing that sort of test. I am a bit surprised Carmack didn't seem to recognize this basic point. But perhaps I am missing further subtleties. Or perhaps he is just trying to indirectly shift blame to Dobkin when it really belongs to the legal system (or where actually the legal system correctly discerned something was going on). For the actual 90-page Zenimax ruling which describes the abstract filtration comparison test in the words seemingly given to the jury for this particular case, see pages 21 onward (but especially page 26-30) https://www.scribd.com/document/338147994/Ruling-in-Zenimax-vs-Facebook-s-Oculus https://www.scribd.com/document/338147994/Ruling-in-Zenimax-... For direct copyright infringement, only Oculus was found guilty (ZeniMax claims post-trial at http://uploadvr.com/zenimax-responds-john-carmacks-facebook-note-experts/ http://uploadvr.com/zenimax-responds-john-carmacks-facebook-... some employee admitted he copy-pasted some code to an Oculus SDK.) Carmack was innocent. For vicarious copyright infringement (ie management should have known/prevented it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability), Oculus/Facebook/Carmack were innocent but Palmer Lucky and Brenden Iribe (before they founded Oculus?) were guilty. For contributory copyright infringement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_liability, a "party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party." ), Oculus/Facebook were innocent but Iribe, Palmer, and this time Carmack were guilty. BUT, the ruling then goes on to say that "the defenses of license or de minimis use bars Zenimax's claim for copyright infringement" for Palmer, Iribe and Carmack (but not for Oculus). So whatever Palmer/Iribe/Carmack did wasn't that bad, but the actual copying of code to the SDK by Oculus somehow merited $50m damages (I can't see why that won't get reduced substantially on appeal, no copy-pasted-code-to-an-SDK really caused Zenimax $50m damages.) For violating the NDA Palmer Lucky signed before Oculus was even formed (but which was ruled to still be in effect after Oculus), Zenimax gets $200 million. And for "false designation of origin", (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_designation_of_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_designation_of_origin), where the manufacturer/seller lies about the origin of their products, Oculus was guilty for $50m, Palmer Lucky (the visionary founder) for $50m and Brendan Iribe (the CEO) for $150m. I'm not sure I understand the factual basis of what happened here, but having been in startups that deliberately obscured the origins/key parts of underlying technologies to angel investors, I can see the origins of product misrepresentations as being worthy of substantial damages as it really does affect Oculus's value and Zenimax's ability to be compensated for "their part". Probably will get knocked down too, but this is the most defensible part of the $ amount. Sorry for the long post.

by Digory 10y ago

itsdrewmiller 10y ago

Yeah, this was the part that seemed most important and potentially most unreliable to me. I would like to see where they officially requested that this testimony be made public and were denied.

gregw2 10y ago

Interesting. David Dobkin is the Dean of Faculty at Princeton University who used to be a Computer Science professor there for a very long time before being Dean; his specialty was 3D geometry (not a 3D shader guy, kinda a bit more math-y than applied.) I don't know if he ever presided over code plagarism cases with clever Princeton CS undergrads but since he was department chair for a fair chunk of time, information on that may well provide interesting insight into his methodology and previous experience. (Reviewing papers for various computer graphics entities might also contain additional plagarism experience but that's unlikely to be code-comparison-type plagarism.) Given his CV I would be very surprised whether he has considered abstract syntax trees much since he got his PhD 43 years ago, but I am not convinced by Carmack that is automatically exculpatory. I would consider him a reasonable pick as an expert in 3D geometry and algorithms (although he hasn't been active in the field in 10+ years he did it for a /long/ time which is likely sufficient) and he may have dealt with plagarism of regular text during his career a moderate amount, but he does NOT seem to be an expert in code-plagarism or code similarity. It's interesting that the former is good enough and they didn't need an expert in the latter. In any case, given the positions he's been at, whatever he's getting paid, even $600+/hour, I doubt he /needs/ the money. (If he is in fact the expert witness.)

gregw2 10y ago
Seems likely it was David Dobkin: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5q5rf2/software_expert_claims_oculus_copied_code_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5q5rf2/software_exper... https://www.elys.com/people/david-dobkin https://www.elys.com/people/david-dobkin Following up on other posters' comments (thank you!), while Carmack proposed Abstract Syntax Trees based copyright detection, he didn't seem to appreciate the standard court methods for detecting non-syntactical copyright violation for code, the abstract filtration comparison test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...). Dobkin it seems didn't have to rule based on his own opinion or based on some academic method whether there was copying, but whether -- given the very specific method laid out by legal precedent to know whether there was copying, assuming that method was true -- whether when he applied it, it indicated there was copying. That makes a lot more sense to me. Dobkin would be a perfectly suitable expert for doing that sort of test. I am a bit surprised Carmack didn't seem to recognize this basic point. But perhaps I am missing further subtleties. Or perhaps he is just trying to indirectly shift blame to Dobkin when it really belongs to the legal system (or where actually the legal system correctly discerned something was going on). For the actual 90-page Zenimax ruling which describes the abstract filtration comparison test in the words seemingly given to the jury for this particular case, see pages 21 onward (but especially page 26-30) https://www.scribd.com/document/338147994/Ruling-in-Zenimax-vs-Facebook-s-Oculus https://www.scribd.com/document/338147994/Ruling-in-Zenimax-... For direct copyright infringement, only Oculus was found guilty (ZeniMax claims post-trial at http://uploadvr.com/zenimax-responds-john-carmacks-facebook-note-experts/ http://uploadvr.com/zenimax-responds-john-carmacks-facebook-... some employee admitted he copy-pasted some code to an Oculus SDK.) Carmack was innocent. For vicarious copyright infringement (ie management should have known/prevented it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability), Oculus/Facebook/Carmack were innocent but Palmer Lucky and Brenden Iribe (before they founded Oculus?) were guilty. For contributory copyright infringement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_liability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_liability, a "party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party." ), Oculus/Facebook were innocent but Iribe, Palmer, and this time Carmack were guilty. BUT, the ruling then goes on to say that "the defenses of license or de minimis use bars Zenimax's claim for copyright infringement" for Palmer, Iribe and Carmack (but not for Oculus). So whatever Palmer/Iribe/Carmack did wasn't that bad, but the actual copying of code to the SDK by Oculus somehow merited $50m damages (I can't see why that won't get reduced substantially on appeal, no copy-pasted-code-to-an-SDK really caused Zenimax $50m damages.) For violating the NDA Palmer Lucky signed before Oculus was even formed (but which was ruled to still be in effect after Oculus), Zenimax gets $200 million. And for "false designation of origin", (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_designation_of_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_designation_of_origin), where the manufacturer/seller lies about the origin of their products, Oculus was guilty for $50m, Palmer Lucky (the visionary founder) for $50m and Brendan Iribe (the CEO) for $150m. I'm not sure I understand the factual basis of what happened here, but having been in startups that deliberately obscured the origins/key parts of underlying technologies to angel investors, I can see the origins of product misrepresentations as being worthy of substantial damages as it really does affect Oculus's value and Zenimax's ability to be compensated for "their part". Probably will get knocked down too, but this is the most defensible part of the $ amount. Sorry for the long post.