Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has revealed the real cost of acquiring virtual reality (VR) firm Oculus while testifying in an intellectual property (IP) theft case against the company.
As expected, he told a Dallas court that it was work done by Oculus that made VR into the valuable technology it is today.
“I’m here because I believe [the claims are] false, and it’s important to testify to that,” he said. “The idea that Oculus products are based on someone else’s technology is just wrong.”
Zuckerberg was called as a witness in the second week of a court case brought by ZeniMax Media , which is suing Facebook for $2bn, claiming that Oculus copied its early innovations in VR when developing the Oculus Rift headset.
The only surprising thing revealed in his testimony was that, in addition to the $2bn purchase agreement announced in 2014 , Facebook paid another $1bn in incentives to keep key members of the Oculus team , reports the BBC .
Zuckerberg also revealed that although he has indicated that he sees VR as an integral part of Facebook’s future, he does not think VR technology is ”fully there yet”.
Facebook announced its acquisition of Oculus in 2014 just ahead of the release of Oculus Rift, saying virtual reality technology was a strong candidate to emerge as the next social and communications platform.
But ZeniMax has accused games designer and id Software co-founder John Carmack of sharing VR intellectual property with Oculus in the four months he worked for both companies, and for taking it with him when he left the ZeniMax-owned id Software in November 2013 for Oculus, where he is now chief technology officer.
In court papers, ZeniMax said: “Carmack secretly and illegally copied thousands of documents containing ZeniMax’s intellectual property from his computer at ZeniMax to a USB storage device which he wrongfully took with him to Oculus.”
ZeniMax also alleges that Carmack destroyed evidence supporting the company’s claims.
Responding to the claims, Oculus said in a statement that its founders have “invested a wealth of time and money in VR” in the belief that the technology can “fundamentally transform the way people interact and communicate”.
“We’re disappointed that another company is using wasteful litigation to attempt to take credit for technology that it did not have the vision, expertise or patience to build,” the statement said.
Facebook’s defence is that Oculus was forced to seek another investor when ZeniMax chose not to invest in VR technology, and that ZeniMax showed interest in VR only after Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus was made public.
In his testimony, Zuckerberg said it was “pretty common when you announce a big deal that people just come out of the woodwork and claim they own some part of the deal”. He also disputed the significance of Zenimax’s role in developing early prototypes of the Oculus Rift.
The next key witness in the court case, which is expected to last three weeks, is Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey , who developed Oculus Rift with Carmack.

© Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450411172/Facebook-chief-reveals-real-cost-of-Oculus-in-court-testimony
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WikiLeaks said that Julian Assange is confident of winning ‘any fair trial’ in the U. S. and indicated that the founder of the whistleblowing website would stand by all the promises he had made in return for clemency to Chelsea Manning, the former U. S. soldier who disclosed classified data relating to the Iraq War to the site.
On Tuesday, Manning’s prison sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama, raising questions over whether Assange would keep his part of a deal he proposed online, and agree to extradition to the U. S.
WikiLeaks has recently also been a thorn in the side of the Democrats in the U. S. by releasing embarrassing emails leaked from the Democratic National Committee that showed that the organization had favored candidate Hillary Clinton over her rival Sen. Bernie Sanders for the party nomination for the presidential elections. It also published mails from the account of John Podesta, chairman of Clinton’s campaign.
U. S. government officials including from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have blamed Russia for orchestrating the leaks, though WikiLeaks has said it does not collaborate with states in the publication of documents.
Last week, WikiLeaks tweeted that if “Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case.” On Tuesday, WikiLeaks tweeted that Assange was confident of winning any fair trial in the US. “Obama’s DoJ prevented public interest defense & fair jury,” it added. The administration of President-elect Donald Trump takes charge on Friday.
WikiLeaks also quoted Assange’s counsel Melinda Taylor as saying that Assange is standing by everything that he said on the “Assange-Manning extradition ‘deal’.”
Assange is staying in the embassy in London of the government of Ecuador as U. K. police say they will arrest him if he comes out, to meet an extradition request from Sweden where he is wanted for questioning in a sexual assault investigation. His supporters have expressed concern that if he is sent to Sweden he could be extradited from there to the U. S. to face espionage charges.
A wrinkle is that WikiLeaks claims it does not know of an extradition request sent by the U. S. In a tweet on Tuesday, Taylor wrote that “US authories consistently affirmed is ongoing national security prosecution against him, but refused 2 affirm/deny sent extradition request.” She added that the U. K. also refuses « to affirm or deny that they have received an extradition request -not the same thing as there being no extradition request.  » Government officials in both countries could not be immediately reached for comment after business hours.
In a letter to Loretta E. Lynch, U. S. Attorney General, Assange’s lawyer in the U. S., Barry J. Pollack, wrote in August that although the Department of Justice had publicly confirmed through court documents and statements to the press that it was conducting an on-going criminal investigation of Assange, the department did not provide him substantive information on the status of the investigation. The letter was published online by WikiLeaks.
The pending investigation into Assange, mentions of which are said to have been made in court documents in the Manning case, is plainly based on his news gathering and reporting activities, Pollack wrote. Its intention was not to aid U. S. enemies or obstruct justice but to inform people about “matters of great public interest,” he added.
In a statement on Obama’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence, Assange said that « in order for democracy and the rule of law to thrive, the Government should immediately end its war on whistleblowers and publishers » such as WikiLeaks and himself. The statement did not refer to his promise to face extradition to the U. S.
« Mr. Assange should not be the target of any criminal investigation. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss with the DOJ the status of its investigation, any request it wants to make for extradition, and its basis for such a request, » Pollack wrote in an email late Tuesday.

© Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3158680/internet/wikileaks-assange-confident-of-winning-any-fair-trial-in-the-us.html
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Qualcomm has faced legal hurdles in recent years for its licensing practices in both Europe and in Asia. Now, the company is coming under fire right here in the United States, and the Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) is leading the charge.
The FTC alleges that Qualcomm used its dominant position as the world’s premier supplier of mobile baseband chips to force “onerous and anticompetitive supply and licensing terms” upon smartphone manufacturers. These actions were also reportedly meant to stifle Qualcomm’s competitors in the baseband field in order to maintain its position as the top supplier.
Qualcomm is accused of running afoul of fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory ( FRAND ) patents, which have been deemed essential industry standards necessary for the proper function of hardware with cellular networks. Qualcomm allegedly threatened the supply of baseband chip for smartphone manufacturers that didn’t pay increased royalties fees for these FRAND patents.
“These royalties amount to a tax on the manufacturers’ use of baseband processors manufactured by Qualcomm’s competitors, a tax that excludes these competitors and harms competition,” cites the FTC. “Increased costs imposed by this tax are passed on to consumers, the complaint alleges.”
The FTC is accusing Qualcomm of three primary offenses:
The third relates specifically to its arrangement with Apple. The lawsuit alleges that Qualcomm cornered Apple into remaining its sole supplier for baseband chips from 2011 through 2016 (Intel finally broke through the wall by providing GSM chips for the iPhone 7 in 2016 ). “Qualcomm recognized that any competitor that won Apple’s business would become stronger, and used exclusivity to prevent Apple from working with and improving the effectiveness of Qualcomm’s competitors.”
Qualcomm reached an agreement with Apple that precluded it from using competing technology like WiMax (which a few years ago was vying against LTE to become the dominant 4G wireless standard). For its part, Apple received rebates for the royalty payments made to Qualcomm “in excess of a specified per-handset cap” according to the court filing.
Qualcomm of course denies any wrongdoing, and was quick to fire back at the FTC allegations:
Qualcomm also alleges that this lawsuit was fast-tracked before all evidence was presented in what it believes was a result of potentially partisan tomfoolery:
For those keeping score, Qualcomm was fined $975 million by Chinese regulators in 2015 and was hit with another $853 million fine in South Korea for similar licensing practices in 2016. So perhaps Qualcomm shouldn’t be too surprised that the U. S. would also get in on the act.

© Source: http://hothardware.com/news/ftc-sues-qualcomm-for-anticompetitive-chip-licensing/
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