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Facebook is very much the aggressor -- in response to the FTC suit, their immediate response was to try and use the courts to strong-arm hundreds of competitors
by HillRat 4y ago
Facebook is very much the aggressor -- in response to the FTC suit, their immediate response was to try and use the courts to strong-arm hundreds of competitors into giving up massive troves of highly sensitive commercial secrets without any kind of formal protection, such as limiting document review to FB's outside counsel. It's ridiculous, it's abusive, it's overbroad, and it's transparently an effort to burden Facebook's competitors while snowing the FTC with massive amounts of paper.
- Ajedi32 4y agoWhat would you have had them do instead? Again: > naturally, one of the primary (only?) things Meta can do to demonstrate this is to subpoena...well...its competition...to demand documents which might help them in court
- midislack 4y agoThey don't have a right to see secret documents other people have. We'll see.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tiahura 4y agoThat's not how litigation works. If SimulaVR wants protection, it has to ask for it. SimulaVR has the right to ask 1) Meta and 2) the court to limit the scope of the subpoena and to set conditions on the review and distribution of the production. If Meta agrees to the conditions, great, the agreement can either be informal, or incorporated into an order for the judge to sign. If Meta is opposed, SimulaVR gets to make their case to the judge and let him decide scope and protective order details.
- tannhauser23 4y agoWelcome to the American legal system. Facebook did nothing wrong here. When I was an attorney and involved with these kinds of subpoenas, we always worked with the third-parties to make document production less burdensome for them. SimulaVR should be working with Meta's attorneys on this instead of throwing a hissy fit online.
- ginko 4y ago>SimulaVR should be working with Meta's attorneys on this instead of throwing a hissy fit online. Well then Meta's attorneys should contact SimulaVR directly instead of sending them a legal letter.
- kanetw 4y agoWe aren't throwing a hissy fit lol. We're just stating the facts and are working with our lawyers to resolve this.
- jijji 4y agowhy not just respond to their subpoena with one line answers....
- kanetw 4y agoResponding to any legal request without legal counsel is a good way to fuck yourself up. There's no "just do x" unless you enjoy playing with fire.
- tannhauser23 4y agoYou made a site complaining about the subpoena and came to Hacker News to complain about it some more. Look, I get that you guys are a small shop but you should not be surprised to be asked to provide evidence in an antitrust litigation over the VR market. I'm guessing you haven't seen a subpoena before - they are all like this, and your attorneys will be able to negotiate something much less burdensome. So get off Hacker News and let your lawyers handle it.
- kanetw 4y agoWe made our weekly blog post about it (because it's worth talking about, IMO) and someone else posted it on HN. It blew up and we're responding to comments as necessary. We're letting our legal counsel handle the actual details, the rest is just talking about it.