If this is actually how US's justice system works it is even more bonkers than I thought. Could someone versed in this legal system explain, please? Is is any accused that can demand documents/data/free research from vaguely related third parties, or only large companies? Enquiring minds want to know!
If one is accused of antitrust practices (as Meta is by the FTC), your defense is to show that there's actually competition. It's not that Meta that wants the documents for corporate espionage (or whatever), but that they want to prove that SimulaVR is competing just fine in the market that contains Meta. This is explained in the article, which many here clearly didn't read past the headline. This is roughly the same as subpoenaing someone as a witness; you don't really have a choice.
In fact, Meta themselves won't be looking at the documents; their lawyers, the FCC, and the rest of the court will. This is standard procedure, and no different from if SMALL_CORP sued BIG_CORP; BIG_CORP would still have to comply with subpoenas from SMALL_CORP.
Yeah, and we’re reacting to how crazy it is that Meta’s competitors are required to divulge internal documents to Meta so Meta can make a case that they aren’t anticompetitive.
> It's not that Meta that wants the documents for corporate espionage
Yes I’m sure we all trust Meta will behave ethically when given private information.
They're not required to divulge documents. They're required to respond to the subpoena. An acceptable response is that you don't want to divulge because they're confidential or the request is too burdensome.
I believe the stance of the justice system is that Facebook's lawyers will behave ethically with the information because it's a professional obligation for lawyers.
You and I might see that as a laughable claim - unfortunately the justice system is run entirely by lawyers.
So someone is sued for anticompetitive practices and that gives them alibi for looking directly into others' books, and they're just supposed to trust Meta will forget all the information afterwards?
IANAL, but AIUI in theory all major competitors get subpoenaed and then everything they say becomes part of the public record - so everyone sees everyone's cards laid out.
How exactly does that change anything? Meta is a 100000x larger company, they can do much more with that info than the others. And what about foreign competitors? What about not yet founded/stealth competitors? What about competitors only maybe planning to release a product (e.g. Apple)?
Yes, that's what a subpoena is. And it can be done in pretty much any legal system.
If you're on trial for murder, and your alibi is 'I was at work', you're going to need your boss to come in to testify on your behalf. If he doesn't feel like it, the court will compel him to show up and testify, on his time, and on his expense, under penalty of prejury.
If I was at work when the murder occurred, two or three discussions between police and my boss and coworkers would prevent a murder trial in the first place. Prosecutors don't like defendants with solid alibis.
Probably FTC has already done equivalent investigation, which calls the subpoena described in TFA further into question.
My understanding is that these kinds of enforcement actions have a much lower success rate than criminal cases, because large firms with legal departments are rarely squarely in the wrong. They are usually treading a grey line, and evidence like this can push the case one way or another.
But by doing this, they are inadvertently showing that a company like SimulaVR cannot compete in this space, as the small team in charge of actually doing some work now has to devote its time to take care of this.
What happens if SimulaVR tells these lawyers to pound sand? I cannot imagine if I ran a small buisness and I was the victim of this how I would afford it.
I suppose this is why it’s a bad idea to run any company from the USA. Being victimized by their corrupt legal system at your own expense… This sort of thing doesn’t happen when you run your company from behind Tor and use crypto for payment.
Most legal systems do this: if you're accused of doing X, and your claim that you weren't doing X hinges on evidence that can only be produced by other parties, you explain that to the court, and then the court can decide to compel those other parties to produce that evidence in the interest of a fair trial.
In this case, Meta is being accused of anti-competitive behaviour. Their claim is that there is plenty of competition and that if they are to be put on trial, then they should be able to present evidence that there is competition. The court agreed with that statement. Meta themselves cannot produce that evidence, because they are not privy to business goings-on at other companies, all they can see is other companies that are--in their opinion--competing in the same space. As such, Meta can only go "we consider the following companies our competition, their documents should make it ample clear that we are in competition" with enough of an additional explanation to justify each company listed. And then the court goes "very well, this is motivated enough to justify us compelling these companies to produce the evidence that you claim exists as part of discovery".
The only quirk here is the claim that a small company can't reasonably do what is being requested of them by the courts. And again: not by Meta, but by the courts. Meta doesn't get these documents, only Meta's legal team gets those documents, Meta employees don't get to see what's in the many boxes of discovery material that their legal team is going to receive. Not Bob from accounting, not Kelly from finance, and not Mark from the CEO team. Only the lawyers do.
Its still unethical. First off its not that big enough of a deal to warrant the financial obliteration of a small buisness via legal fees/airfare/hotels etc. Nobody died or has their life at stake here. Second off the company should be compensated for their expenses(lost buisness/airfare/legal fees). If this doesnt happen, then its clearly a court unjustly financially harming a small buisness. Thankfully we live in an era where its now possible to operate a company anonymously and not be beholden to unethical national legal systems operating at the behest of the ultra-wealthy.
You try to downplay the severity by saying "only Meta lawyers can see the contents" but that is still wrong. Whos to say these lawyers wont steal your trade secrets and use them to their own advantage? These people are still on Meta's payroll and nothing prevents Meta from asking its lawyers to divulge those secrets. To trust them not to is incredibly naive.
> You try to downplay the severity by saying "only Meta lawyers can see the contents" but that is still wrong. Whos to say these lawyers wont steal your trade secrets and use them to their own advantage?
They are ethically and legally bound not to. They can be disbarred, sanctioned, sued by SimulaVR, even thrown in prison. You're here ranting about the US court system, but you're wrong about a lot of it.
Lawyers, especially highly paid giant-tech-firm representing lawyers, tend to play by the rules when it comes to the actual court process itself. Could they pass all this confidential information on to Mark? Absolutely, trivially so even. Would it be a crime to do so? Absolutely also that. Are they going to risk their firm for a client? No lawyer playing at the level of Meta or Apple would be that stupid.
When it comes to lawyers, you get what you pay for, and Meta pays a lot for excellent lawyers who make sure they do everything by the book and follow the letter of the law where possible, and the spirit of the law where it can be defended if it needs to be, in order to get cases thrown out or settled before they make it to actual trial.
Most cases die in discovery, exactly because the lawyers (and only the lawyers) get to see everyone's cards, and get to say "look we can go to trial, but we've both seen all the documents, and it's plainly clear that one of us is right".
"But they can air all that dirty laundry during trial!" no, they can't, because unless that dirty laundry is necessary to demonstrate competition, which would be stupidly unlikely, you don't just get to reveal every document that your legal team has access to just because you feel like it. Doing so can get you removed from trial, sanctioned, or even disbarred, depending on how severe the impact of your misconduct is. The current issue is about discovery: you and your team (and NOT your client) get to find the information you need by sifting through thousands of documents.
Just because they “could be disbarred” or go to prison does for it also doesn’t mean they physically can’t or won’t do it. So I’m actually not wrong about anything I said here.
Yes, but in practice, this is just an opening offer in a negotiation. Parties will typically counter with something like: depose me in my home town for no more than x hours, and I'll produce what docs I have if you sign a protective order that makes produced info attorney's-eyes-only, i.e., business people cannot review. Unlikely a court would require more than this.
That negotiation still requires lawyers. Overall less legal expense assuming it succeeds, but we're still talking about a 5-figure legal bill at minimum, which for a small startup is a big hit. The employee distraction will probably double the cost at least, so it's reasonable to expect they'll lose 6 figures on this, which is equivalent to hiring another employee.
In-between Meta’s “to show that we have competition, we would like to show company Foo’s documents on X, Y and Z” and this subpoena is a judge who decides on whether those documents would help them reach a decision in this case, and whether it’s reasonable to ask Foo to do that work.
Also, the data you provide goes to the court, not (directly) to Meta.
I also think you can ask the court to keep (parts of) the data from the public record. That would require an argument as to why making it public would harm you.
It's not nearly as crazy as it sounds. If you were accused of murder and your alibi was you were at a bar, then the court could force the bar to produce any video footage they had, any records of transactions etc. If it was claimed that I was at said bar on said night, I could be forced to appear in court and produce any diary entries I had, any photos on my phone from that night. These are reasonable requests.
